


Bless Her With Salt

by lesbiangreyjoy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Violence, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Daenerys Targaryen Lives, Eventual Sex, Explicit Language, F/F, Happy Ending, Iron Islands (Westeros), Major Character Undeath, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, POV Daenerys, POV Third Person, POV Yara, Past Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rating May Change, Romance, Theon Greyjoy Lives, this is blatant scottish independence propaganda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiangreyjoy/pseuds/lesbiangreyjoy
Summary: Yara whirled on her heels. Daenerys stood in front of the blackness of an open door – dignified, beautiful, and alive.After her death at the hands of Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen is resurrected in the Temple of the Lord of Light in Volantis. Yara Greyjoy, still pursuing independence for the Iron Islands, brings her home.





	1. YARA I

The sea was choppy and treacherous for the better part of their voyage. Days and nights had been spent huddled in cabins below deck while wind and water ravaged the ship, and two crewmen were lost to the waves before the storms subsided. Yara Greyjoy had not felt so comfortable in a long while. 

She stood by the foremast as the vast harbour of Volantis came into view on the horizon, her hand raised to her eyes against the glare of the sun. She was sweating under her armour, but not half as badly as many of her crew. Rivulets ran down the faces of her grunting oarsmen.

Yara raised her voice. "Not far now, men." 

She turned from the foremast, moving across the decks to her cabin. Darrik Pyke stood by the door, grim and still. Darrik was a lean, dark-haired ironman, of few words and fewer smiles, but staunch and fearless. Yara turned the corner of her mouth up and clapped his shoulder roughly as she passed. "Enough of that scowl. You'll get your drink when we dock." Her first mate scowled harder, the bridge of his nose reddening with sunburn. Yara grinned and yanked open the cabin door. 

She let the grin fade as she shut the door behind herself and sank into a stiff oak chair. In truth, she felt guilty for commanding her crew halfway across the world like this, chasing the ghost of a rumour as if her people back home weren't unstable and discontent. She should be home, she knew – on the Iron Islands, arguing for their independence, overseeing Theon's recovery. It had been a shock to everyone when he had survived the spear through his abdomen in Winterfell, and he had lain for weeks in Winterfell before he was able to make the journey back to Pyke. When Yara had left the islands, he was still reliant on a driftwood crutch to walk. But he had lived.

Daenerys Targaryen had not.

When the whispers had started, of a pale body on the back of a dragon, of a Volantene temple and the sorcery of a Red Priestess, Yara had not believed them. _ The ghost stories of tired smallfolk_, she had thought. _ Hopeful and foolish_. When the whispers had become too loud to ignore, Yara had summoned her crew and followed them. If the Dragon Queen lived, Yara's loyalty remained hers. And if the rumours were false…

Yara exhaled heavily through her nose and forced the corner of her mouth back up. In sparer clothing, the heat of the Summer Sea would be a welcome reprieve from the winter seeping into the wet bones of Pyke. Exotic silks and spices from the markets would fill the ship hold, perhaps a woman or three, and she would not return empty-handed.

She stood from her seat, moving to the window to look on the waves behind the vessel. It was not that she was a true skeptic. She had heard the stories about Jon Snow as much as anyone – how he had been riddled with blades in Castle Black, and lived all the same. She had heard about the red woman who had implored her fire god to bring him back. If there was any god to bring back Daenerys Targaryen, it would be that one. 

Yet Daenerys's death had been so momentous, so sudden and catastrophic to her forces, that Yara could scarcely imagine it might be undone. The rubble of King's Landing was still hot when Snow had plunged the dagger into her breast – deservedly, some had said. Yara could not have said whether she felt it deserved or not. She felt only fury. She felt fury as the Seven Kingdoms reshaped themselves into Six and the North, felt fury as the Starks claimed their seats of power, felt fury as the ironborn demand for autonomy was quashed once more. Daenerys had extended her hand to Yara, and with it the only alliance Yara could find. Daenerys had been murdered, and Yara's power stolen again. 

Yara braced her hand against the cabin wall by the window, leaning heavily against it, her gaze unfocused on the swelling green sea. She was tired. It was not the sort that could be fixed with sleep or salt cod, but a deep, gnawing exhaustion. It pulled heavy on her bones, slowed her breathing, flushed her veins with lead, murmured _ you have done all you can. _Euron was dead, and Theon was alive, but how much had truly changed on the Iron Islands, after all her fighting? She was their queen, but in reputation alone, and her people were under the thumb of a king who felt nothing. The spear did not kill Theon, but Yara wondered how much more pain it would take to finally break her little brother. She wondered how much more it would take to break her.

Yara straightened and dropped her hand from the cabin wall. She was no beaten wench, no old and tired soldier. Yara Greyjoy was a warrior, a queen, and she was ironborn. If Daenerys was alive, Yara would thank that bloody fire god, and bring her ally home. And if Daenerys was dead, Yara would go on fighting anyway. 

_ Still_, she thought, as her ship finally drew up to the harbour of Volantis, _ alive would be preferable_.

*

When the bridge was laid from the ship to the dock, Yara was first across. The air settled hot and heavy around her within seconds, and she adjusted her tunic uncomfortably. Darrik fell into step beside her as she moved towards the city. 

Yara glanced at him. "Go," she said. "Get that drink." 

Darrik nodded once and was gone. The majority of her crew were not far behind in dispersing in search of taverns. A small party remained, crewmen too loyal or too proud to yield to the heat, following Yara from the harbour into the heart of the great city, directly west towards the raised Temple of the Lord of Light.

The streets of Volantis teemed with both freemen and slaves; merchants calling out their goods of wines, herbs and foreign fruits, men in red preaching of the Lord of Light, mothers shepherding ragged children through the crowds, old women fanning their necks with fabric stretched between wooden rods. Women with teardrop tattoos exposed their breasts to Yara and her party as they passed. Yara cast a lingering glance on one – a tall, dark beauty with fuller lips and finer hips than might be found on any Westerosi wench – but restored her gaze to the path ahead. A nobleman passed by in a palanquin. Yara thought ruefully that she might have had the presence of mind to hire one. She brought her hand to her temple to wipe the beading moisture, and pressed on towards the temple. 

The longer the sun beat down on her, the harder Yara found it to recall the bitter winter she had left behind. Volantis was humming with people, and a rancid-sweet smell permeated the humid air of the city, but it seemed to Yara that this was an idyllic place separate from the changing of the seasons. _ All that flame-worship, perhaps. _

And if the Volantenes had heard of the war against the dead back home, if they had heard of the Battle of Winterfell against the wights and the Night King, they gave no sign of it. Men, women and children scurried past, going about their small lives as Yara imagined they'd done since the age of the Valyrian Freehold. It baffled Yara to see such innocent mundanity, and made her want to laugh. Volantis told her that the world went on, and the wars of Westeros would soon be no more than a page in the history books, and a story to tell the babes.

Before long, the temple loomed before Yara's party. The colossal building was a mass of steps, towers, columns and architectural features, the sunlit walls glinting with the golden, shifting colours of fire.

Before they could begin their ascent to the doors, a small crew of slave soldiers formed a line in front of them, blocking their entry. Each was robed in orange and armoured in decorated steel, their faces tattooed with fierce flames. Yara halted before them – protectors of the temple, she supposed. Slaves to the Lord of Light. She might have known.

"My name is Yara Greyjoy," she said. She addressed the soldier directly in front of her, though whether he was a leader or an underling she could not guess. Whichever he was, he gave no reaction to her introduction.

Yara took a breath. "If Daenerys Targaryen is alive inside that temple, I'll see her. Now."

That produced a reaction. "The mother of dragons?" the soldier replied.

"Aye."

"Your men. They stay here." The soldiers' line broke, forming a path between two halves for Yara to ascend the steps. They had known her name after all. Yara looked at her men, gave a cursory nod, and turned to climb the first step. Unafraid, she allowed the slave soldiers to escort her up and inside the temple.

The massive hall Yara entered was no cooler than the streets had been. Fires raged in ornate braziers throughout. The slave soldiers vanished from her flanks, and the great doors were closed once again. The hall was empty and still, save for the bloody flames. If Daenerys was here, there was no sign of her. No ardent followers swarmed the temple, no dragon sat atop the roof. Had the soldiers allowed her entry only to see her leave in defeat?

Yara lifted her chin and moved further inside. The walls were lined with doors and archways; some closed shut, some gaping into an unnatural pitch darkness. The light from the many sources of flames made the shadows of the hall's pillars dance, like rowdy feast-goers, or like fanatics in a state of ecstasy. A bead of sweat trickled down Yara's spine.

She felt a presence at her back and spun. A woman had appeared – a red priestess, her gown crimson, her smile serene. 

Yara eyed her cautiously, but when she spoke her tone was firm and authoritative. "Is Daenerys alive?"

The red priestess spoke as though she had not heard Yara's question. "Yara Greyjoy," she said. "Queen of the Iron Islands of Westeros. You have travelled far to be here."

"Rather unfair to know me so well without gracing me with your name, isn't it?" Yara curved her mouth into a vaguely flirtatious smile, though she felt little but apprehension. The priestess _ was _attractive, Yara would have had to be blind to miss it, but for all her low-cut dress, her sweet heart-shaped face, and her enigmatic smile, there was a dark fervour in her eyes that made Yara uneasy.

"Kinvara," the priestess said. "High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis, the Flame of Truth, the Light of Wisdom, and the First Servant of the Lord of Light."

"Must I remember all of those titles?" After a moment, Yara dropped her smile. "You didn't answer my question. Is–"

Kinvara interrupted without a change in her peaceful tone. The slight smile never left her lips. "Daenerys Stormborn was the one who was promised. She freed slaves, and crucified the masters. She led the people of this world against the darkness in the Great War, and she was triumphant. She brought dragons into this world once again – creatures of fire, the Lord's gift. She was reborn in the flames once, and so have the flames given new life to her once more."

"She's alive?" Yara turned her head from Kinvara, fixing her eyes on one of the many braziers. The whispers had been true. After all, Daenerys's body had not been found in the rubble of the Red Keep. Yara had assumed that Drogon had burned her, taken care of his mother's corpse the only true way, and only then headed east. How intelligent were dragons, truly? Had he carried her to this city, to this immense temple, knowing there were still believers? Had he known she might be saved?

"The Lord of Light still has a purpose for Daenerys." Kinvara's words dragged Yara out of her speculation. She returned her gaze to the priestess. Kinvara stood motionless, never taking her eyes off Yara, never moving her hands from their pious clasp at her front, never letting that little smile falter. "The Great War is won, but many shadows of this world remain. Daenerys Stormborn has a path yet to walk."

"What path is that?"

Another voice cut through Yara's focus on Kinvara. "I intend to find that out for myself."

Yara whirled on her heels. Daenerys stood in front of the blackness of an open door – dignified, beautiful, and alive. Two small braids drew her silver hair back from her face, but the rest of it tumbled in waves past her shoulders, partially obscuring her dress of deep scarlet and black. Its skirt brushed the floor at her feet, but its sleeves were silky, wispy things that draped about her arms, showing more ivory skin than Yara had seen from her since their first meeting in the Great Pyramid of Meereen.

"Daenerys," Yara murmured, before she remembered herself. She lifted her chin. "Your Grace."

"Yara," Daenerys responded. Her expression was impassive, but Yara thought she saw the corner of Daenerys's mouth twitch. "You're wondering how it is I'm standing here."

"I suppose I must be."

It was Kinvara who explained how their reunion had come to be. It was as Yara had speculated: Daenerys's monstrous, grieving child had lifted her body from the floor of the ruined throne room and flown without pause to Kinvara's doorstep, Jon's dagger still lodged in her chest. Whatever witchcraft or prayer Kinvara had used was sacred, highly ritualised, and not meant for Yara's ears – she doubted she would have liked to hear the foreign words, anyway – but Daenerys had woken. Her Unsullied and Dothraki had departed for Naath and the Dothraki Sea respectively, and Drogon had flown off once more towards the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, but still Daenerys's cold, stiff limbs had softened and warmed with the fire god's heat, and the Dragon Queen was reborn in flame and smoke again.

The three women were silent for a moment after Kinvara finished the tale. Yara's eyes roamed over Daenerys's body, taking in her regal posture, her unblemished skin. _ You wouldn't know she had been a corpse not two moons past. _

The last of the queen's armies and her children were gone, and as far as Yara could surmise, Daenerys had nothing but the hospitality of the Volantene temple, the gown she wore, and her life. Retrieving her armies would take coin and ships – Daenerys had neither. If Kinvara had not told Yara this, she would not have guessed it from Daenerys's face; she looked as proud and composed and graceful as Yara had ever seen her. Yara supposed there had been times when the queen had even less than she did now.

"Your Grace," Yara said finally, "I've come to take you home."


	2. DAENERYS I

The ship rocked gently on the open sea. Dany brushed her hand idly over the furs covering the seat of her chair in Yara's cabin, as if the sensation was the first she'd ever felt.

It hadn't been difficult to accept Yara's offer. Daenerys had no armies, no dragons, no coin… nothing but her beating heart, and the heat of her righteous fury. She would have demanded Yara sail to Naath for Dany's Unsullied, and to the Bay of Dragons for her _ khalasar _ roaming the Dothraki Sea, but Yara had come with only one ship – _ a covert undertaking, perhaps _– and so Dany had little choice but to agree to return with her to the Iron Islands, and there endeavour to regroup.

Dany focused on one of the small cabin windows and the open sea beyond. She was on her way back to Westeros, her home, her territory, but it felt alien all over again. All she had done was move the wheel on again. The Seven Kingdoms were Six and the North, and the Starks reigned in place of the Lannisters. Dany was back at the start.

She had not been to Pyke before, that was true. She envisioned clear, swelling tides; lichen-encrusted stone; gulls shrieking in a blue sky. An isolated, idyllic place. The ironborn were maligned throughout the mainland, Dany knew – condemned for barbarians and rapers, left well alone on their rocky outcrop in the Sunset Sea. The hatred of their cultural crimes was fair, but the consequences were convenient. It was an unfamiliar place to Dany, and a safe one.

She would not be suspected on the Iron Islands. The secrecy would give her time to think, to plan, and to persevere. _ The throne is mine. I earned it. I won it. I ended Cersei's reign and liberated the people of Westeros, _ my _ people, and for it I was murdered. _

It had been jarring to awaken suddenly to the warmth and firelight of the Volantene Temple of the Lord of Light. Dany had been staring up at the ruined ceiling of the throne room of the Red Keep, at the smoke-hazed sky beyond where the roof had fallen through, at the broken stones still smouldering and crumbling. Jon Snow had been in her peripheral vision – distraught, face creased in anguish – _ but I will not think on Jon Snow now. _

Dany's eyes had stopped seeing, and when she blinked them open again, they had been focused on the arched golden ceiling of the temple.

Kinvara had stepped in immediately, hushing Dany, soothing her panic and rage, explaining where she was and how this had come to be. Kinvara, with her red dress and intense gaze, her religious ardour and flawless Valyrian. She had clothed Daenerys, brought her honey and wine, _ saved her_. And asked for nothing in return.

"The Lord of Light has a purpose for you, Daenerys."

Dany had pressed her lips together, looked down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. "My people are gone. My dragons are gone." She brought her hand to her chest and felt the thick, ragged scar tissue below the fabric of her gown. She grit her teeth and dropped her hand back to her lap. "I failed. I failed to break the wheel."

Kinvara had smiled her inscrutable smile and lowered herself to a crouch before Daenerys, holding her gaze intently. "The world turns on many wheels, Daenerys Stormborn," she murmured. "Which is yours to break?"

_ The world turns on many wheels. _

Dany played the scene over in her mind as she sat in the cabin, searching for meanings in Kinvara's words she had missed, searching for a light on the path ahead. Without her armies, without her loyal Unsullied and _ khalasar_, she felt vulnerable. Dany felt so much a child again she half-expected Viserys to enter the cabin and warn her against waking the dragon. 

Dany lifted her head._ I am the dragon. And I am awake. _

Nothing ought to have changed. Daenerys was who she had always been. _ The Unburnt, Rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons_. The world turned on many wheels, but if Kinvara had been plain about anything, it was that Dany's purpose was true. She had known it from the beginning – from the first woman she saved, the first slave she freed, the moment that Viserys's crown passed to her. One wheel was hers to break.

Dany had been denied her throne, and thrown back to the powerless start, but her blood simmered with rage and determination, not defeat. Once again, the smoke and flame had birthed her anew. _ With or without my dragons. _

The loss of Drogon was painful. He had carried her to Volantis, had he not? He had known who could save his mother, he had known to take her far from the Seven Kingdoms. Yet he had not stayed – he would be in the Shadow Lands by Asshai now, if Kinvara had been correct. As Yara's ship sailed across the Summer Sea, Dany would be getting further from him by the hour.

She gave a sigh and sank back in her chair. It was the right thing, she knew. He was the last living dragon. Men across the world would fight tooth and nail to be the one to slay the last dragon, to have their name sung in cold-hearted glory until the end of time. Better that he lived, alone in a wasteland though he may be, than die by her side after Viserion and Rhaegal. 

Drogon may have been her child – her _ last _child – but Daenerys knew there came a day when all children must leave their mothers.

*

Some hours later, the cabin door swung open, and Yara Greyjoy stepped inside. Her hair was windswept, and her tunic rumpled and worn-looking under her kraken-emblazoned armour, but aboard a ship was Yara's natural environment; she looked proud and fierce and strong.

The cabin was the captain's quarters, but no sooner than Dany boarded was it given over for her accommodation. Dany did not know where Yara had moved – a cabin kept for lordlings and ladies, perhaps, or failing that some less lustrous crewman's bunk – but she had made no protest to the arrangement. Dany had seen finer cabins than this one, as it seemed no ironborn captain was above damp-stained walls and rickety furniture, but it _ was _ Yara's, and Dany had accepted the respectful gesture with courtesy.

Yara kicked the door shut and moved into the cabin, dropping a haphazard bundle of clothing onto the table by Dany's chair. Dany lifted her hand to touch the rough fabric.

"That dress won't do on Pyke, Your Grace," Yara said, nodding towards Dany's crimson gown.

Dany dropped her hand, clasping it over the other, and lifted her chin to look at Yara. "I will not stay long on Pyke," she responded.

"You have a plan, then." Yara crossed the cabin to the chair opposite Dany's, collapsing into it with a sigh and kicking her feet up to rest on the table carelessly.

Daenerys averted her gaze. "Not yet," she admitted finally.

"You still want to be Queen?"

"I _ am _ Queen."

"Not yet. Not while you're sitting here, alone." Yara eyed Dany, her brow creased. Dany tightened her jaw and fixed her gaze on the sea beyond the window. Yara spoke the truth, but the reminder of Dany's helplessness frustrated her. She would use her time on the Iron Islands to gather her strength and retrieve her forces, to press on with her cause and take back what was hers, what House Stark had stolen from her... but the _ how _of it all was still outwith her grasp.

After a moment, Dany quirked one corner of her mouth upwards and looked back towards Yara. "I do not seem to be entirely alone."

Yara smiled. There was still a grimness about her face, and lines between her brows that never entirely faded, but some of the tension left her shoulders. She interlocked her fingers, resting her hands on her stomach atop the iron plate.

"I suppose not," she said. "But what a place to be alone in."

"The sea. You enjoy it."

Yara gave a quick laugh. "The sea is a better home than any little four-walled keep, Your Grace. What castle storms and rages like a beast itself?" She crossed one ankle over the other on the tabletop, slinking comfortably down in her chair. The Lady Reaper of Pyke did not hold much regard for grace. _ She is more a queen here than sitting any throne_, Dany thought.

"You aren't a stranger to the sea yourself, Your Grace," Yara said. It was an understatement. Even before Daenerys had sailed across the Narrow Sea to claim her throne, her early life had been full of voyages between the Free Cities, evading the Baratheon king's assassins. 

Yara went on. "But this is rather less men than you first sailed to Westeros with."

"But they are men. And loyal to me, are they not?" Daenerys lifted her head a little higher. "Do I have your loyalty, Yara?" She searched Yara's face, looking for some sort of promise. Without her armies at her side, and with Kinvara long behind them, the Greyjoy was Dany's last ally. She had placed her faith in Yara when she boarded her ship – but she had misplaced her faith before.

Yara only widened her smile. "Did you think I sailed to Volantis just to brown my skin?"

The two women held each other's gaze for a moment. Both were smiling, but the silence was thick with unspoken anxieties.

Finally, Yara brought her boots off the table and straightened in her chair with a huff. She planted her boots far apart on the cabin floor, resting her forearms on her thighs and leaning forward on them. "I won't do this without your say, Your Grace." Her tone was warning.

Dany looked at her questioningly, but said nothing. Yara brought a hand back to rest on her belt. "You might be working on a plan, but your armies won't come back on their own," Yara said. "And the smallfolk won't come rushing to your side, either. Jon Snow is in exile–" Dany tensed at the name. "–but many believe he was right to do what he did. To murder you."

Daenerys watched Yara as she unsheathed a wickedly sharp, ebony-handled knife from her belt. She held it at her knee, the blade pointed down and away from Dany, non-threatening.

"You need to be no one," Yara said. "Until you have your plan, until you have your forces and your dragon back. A lowborn girl, a serving wench, it doesn't matter. Daenerys Targaryen is not safe."

Dany inhaled. She glanced at the rough-spun clothing on the table beside her, then turned her gaze back to Yara's knife and watched the blade's edge gleam in the light. But Yara was right. Without her dragons, protectors, followers, Unsullied and _ khalasar_, Daenerys – Unburnt, Khaleesi, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons – was nothing but a vulnerable young woman with fine gowns and extremely distinguishable Targaryen hair.

Daenerys met Yara's eyes.

"I have died once. I do not intend to die again."

Yara's mouth curved into a smirk. "I'm rather fond of sayings like that."

*

The voyage to the Iron Islands was smooth and unhindered. 

Yara offered her hand as Dany stepped cautiously off the gangplank. Dany's boots hit flat, solid rock, and she released Yara's hand as she glanced about her surroundings. Pyke was a different place from the romantic island of her imagination. Gulls shrieked, but they sailed against a murky grey sky, darkening with the promise of rain. The waves battering the rocks were inky black against the white froth. Smallfolk roamed the Lordsport harbour, casting disinterested glances at the docked ship before going about their business once more. The air was sharp with the scent of brine and seaweed.

Daenerys felt small and invisible, but the feeling was a comforting one. She lifted her hands to her hair, smoothing it back from her face. Yara had hacked the entire length of it off; Dany was left with an uneven crop of straight platinum, hitting just below her earlobes. The rough-hewn garments she had been given to replace her dress were masculine and overlarge, and the fabric thick and heavy, but Dany found herself grateful for the warmth as well as the anonymity when the biting wind began to scald her cheeks.

Dany wandered further into the harbour town, drinking in the dull soil and stunted trees and daub and wattle homesteads. Yara vanished from her side, but swiftly returned leading a dappled grey gelding by the reins. The wind whipped her dark hair against her face, but she paid it no mind and her strides were as long and purposeful as ever. If the voyage had tired Yara at all, she did not display it.

She moved close to Dany's side, and spoke in a low murmur. "My crew won't speak of you," Yara said. "They'd never say another word at all, if I asked them to. They'll follow the pretense well."

"And who must I pretend to be?" Dany stepped towards the horse, lifting her hand to stroke its grey coat absently.

"Dan," Yara said simply. "You'll have guest chambers in the Bloody Keep, but outside of them you're a common girl, a servant."

Dany pressed her lips together and gave a nod. She had committed to her secrecy already, with the loss of her hair and the mannish garb she wore in place of any dress befitting a queen, and she would not complain of a smallfolk name.

Yara mounted the dappled gelding in one fluid motion and extended her hand down to Dany. "Common girls learn to share," she said, smiling. Dany took her hand, allowing Yara to haul her up unceremoniously into the saddle behind her.

"I'm afraid I'll have to call you 'wench' a little more than 'Your Grace'," Yara said as she took the reins into both hands.

"I've been called worse." Dany slid her hands around Yara's waist as Yara set the horse off at a canter through Lordsport, uphill and east to where the castle of Pyke stood bleak and imposing on jutting cliff.

Pyke was not far from Lordsport, and the horseback journey was mercifully short compared to the voyage from Volantis. Yara dismounted when the gelding took them through the gatehouse, helping Dany down after her. A sullen-looking stable boy led the horse away.

Past the kennels and the stables, the castle loomed. It seemed a wonder to Dany that it stood at all; the various keeps rose from the sea on islets and eroded stacks of rock, grey and mean and ragged, some connected only by thin, treacherous rope bridges swaying in the wind. Far below, the water lashed at the rock. The bottom portions of the towers were white with encrusted salt. Pyke survived anyway, as brutal and determined as its household.

Daenerys was relieved to avoid the rope bridges – two covered stone walkways took them to the Bloody Keep, solid and sheltered from the elements. Yara led Dany to a door of thick, dark wood, studded with iron rivets. A maid was hovering nearby, petite and olive-skinned, her big brown eyes fixed on Yara. There was something like intimidation in them, Dany thought.

Yara laid a hand on the doorknob and addressed the thrall. "Nym. Darrik sent for Wex Pyke?" The girl nodded, shooting a glance at Dany, but seeming to see nothing of interest as she looked back to Yara almost immediately.

"I'll fetch him, Your Grace," Nym said, and fled along the corridor.

"'Your Grace'," Dany echoed as the girl disappeared around a corner. She turned her gaze on Yara, an eyebrow lifted in enquiry. "You didn't tell me Bran Stark gave you your independence."

Yara exhaled quickly through her nose, her hand lingering on the doorknob. "He didn't," she said after a moment. "But he will." 

"You're certain?"

Yara met Dany's eyes and turned the corner of her mouth upwards. "There was a kingsmoot on Old Wyk after my uncle's death. Not another name was shouted. I'll be Queen here no matter what Bran the Broken has to say."

Yara turned the knob and opened the door into a large, dark chamber. "Not the only Queen, of course," she added, as Dany entered the room.

What the chamber itself lacked in light and cheer, it made up for in furnishings. No number of tapestries or ornaments could compensate for the high, shadowy ceiling, but they certainly tried. The walls were draped in warm-toned hangings, the wooden furniture pale and pretty. A small fire crackled in the hearth, reprised by a dozen candles around the fur-draped bed.

"What did a lowborn serving wench do to earn a room like this?" Dany asked, her lips curving upwards. The chamber was modest in comparison to many she'd had before, in Pentos and Qarth and Meereen, but it was warm and it was hers.

Yara gave a laugh, sauntering into the chamber behind Dany, but as she opened her mouth to respond, a boy appeared at the doorway. Dany judged him to be several years from manhood still, but the boy's sharp face and thick, tangled brown hair made his age difficult to tell true. He said nothing.

"Wex," Yara said. "This is Daenerys Targaryen." There was no need for her to expand with Dany’s full title; the boy’s eyes grew wide immediately. Dany opened her mouth to protest – _ after all the talk of secrecy? _– but Yara turned to her and spoke again before Dany formed any words. Her tone was confident and her eyes reassuring. "Your Grace, this is Wex Pyke. Your cupbearer."

Dany looked at the boy, who had moved from the doorway into the chamber proper, and had gotten over his shock enough to eye Dany appraisingly. He seemed to have a perceptive quality befitting one many years older.

"Well met, Wex," Dany said softly, masking her apprehension. Wex did not respond. Dany looked to Yara in concern.

"Born dumb," Yara said, not unkindly. Dany parted her lips, then gave a single nod of understanding, and glanced towards the boy again. Wex had turned his keen eyes on the chamber furnishings, seeming awe-struck. _ Understandable, considering the halls we passed through on our way. _Dany was surprised by how quick she was to relax, but she had never taken Yara for a liar.

"There isn't a better confidant on the Iron Islands," Yara laughed. Dany looked back to Wex until he met her eyes.

"I hope not to burden you with too many more secrets, Wex," Dany told the boy. "I imagine you might fill a maester's tome already." Wex gave something like a smile. It was more of a savage teeth-baring, but his eyes sparkled, and Dany decided she would take it.

Yara had crossed to the doorway again, and leant back against it as she addressed Daenerys. "Settle in," she said, "I have a brother to assail."

"Of course," Dany replied. She smiled. "Your Grace."


	3. YARA II

Yara had confined Theon to the Sea Tower, in the room he had kept as a boy, after his return from Winterfell. Her command that he be kept there until well-recovered had been unnecessary, perhaps, as her brother had been unable to rise from the bed for days, and crossing the rope bridge had been out of the question. Still, it had set her mind at ease, and Theon had raised no complaint as he quietly fought to regain his strength.

Some weeks later, he was able to move about Pyke with ease, even to visit the shore on his stronger days, though he was never without his crutch of strong, gnarled driftwood. The spear wound was slow to heal, exacerbated by the winter, and the maester had told Yara it would likely pain him for years to come when the cold was fiercest – but Theon was dogged in his determination, and had still managed to jest that the recovery was no unfamiliar ordeal. 

"I'm still in one piece," he had said. 

He was drowsy on milk of the poppy, but Yara had returned his lopsided smile easily. She was grateful for the glimpse of the irreverent boy again, when the pain and trauma could so easily have seen Theon slip back into the tortured creature he had been before.

"Keep it that way," Yara had responded, and commanded him rest before taking her leave.

Now, having left Daenerys to accustom herself to her chambers in the Bloody Keep, Yara made the trek to the Sea Tower. The voyage to and from Volantis had been lengthy, and she was impatient for news both on Theon's health and on the state of the Iron Islands since she'd left them. She would tell him about Daenerys, too – her revival, her return – _ if he is fit to bear the shock, and there are no more pressing matters to deal with first. _

She crossed the swaying rope bridge swiftly, placing her feet on the most stable slats and avoiding the patches of wood-rot and splintering with the instinctual ease of one who had been crossing the bridge her entire life. The Sea Tower was not one of the larger keeps of Pyke; Theon's chamber was no more than twenty feet from the decaying outer door of the tower.

Yara pushed open the door to the chamber, but found her brother absent. The brazier was unlit, and the chill of Pyke had not taken long to set into the room. The driftwood crutch was propped askew in a corner. Yara tightened her jaw at the sight of it. _ He is better, or he's playing the brave fool. _She left without bothering to close the door behind her.

A case of narrow, twisting stairs took her to the solar, and it was there she found him. The solar was a dank, drafty set of rooms their father had seldom left towards the end of his life. Yara had not wasted time in taking it for her personal chambers after her kingsmoot victory. For all it lacked in comfort, the solar was the Lord's dwelling, and she was a better Lord than the Iron Islands had seen in some ages.

Theon was standing by the roaring hearth, propped against the mantle by a forearm and staring down at some scrap of a letter in his free hand.

Yara raised her voice to draw his attention, curving her mouth up into a half-smile. "I see you survived the stairs." She glanced Theon over as she approached. Whether he was reliant on the mantle to hold himself upright, she could not tell, but his eyes were clear of poppy haze, and his cheeks had colour in them again. _ My absence did no harm, then. _Theon was more resilient than Yara gave him credit for, she knew, but the knowledge did little to assuage her concern.

Theon spun, dropping his arm from the mantle and lowering the letter to his side. He tucked it a little behind his back, out of Yara's sight. "Yara."

"You look better."

"Aye."

Yara moved to stand across the hearth from him, leaning her own shoulder against the mantle and folding her arms loosely across her iron breastplate. "What is that you're trying to hide?"

Theon shifted uncomfortably. "A letter." His brow was creased. He looked worried.

"Who sent it?"

"Sansa." Theon straightened his back and amended himself. "Sansa Stark. The Queen in the North."

Yara exhaled quickly through her nose and dropped her head, looking into the hearth's hungry flames. When Winterfell had prepared for its battle against the dead, she had known that Theon wanted nothing more than to stand and fight alongside the Starks – not Daenerys's armies, not the wildlings from beyond the Wall, but the Starks. Yara had allowed it, knowing the duty Theon felt to them. But her brother had only barely escaped with his life.

"What does she want?" Yara asked, fixing her gaze on the fire.

"She doesn't want anything. She asked that I was well." Theon hesitated, but lifted his chin. "She said that there is – a place for me, at Winterfell – should I want it. To guard her and give counsel."

Yara scoffed, uncrossed her arms and pushed herself off the mantle, pacing in a slow arc around the solar. _ I should have seen this coming_. _ House Stark will never be finished with him. _

"Should you want it," she muttered. Theon was watching her. This time, it was Yara who would not meet his eye. "And you do."

Theon's response came reluctantly, but honestly. "Aye."

Yara continued her pacing, her hands curled into tight fists by her sides. Was he bound to reject the Iron Islands at every turn? There were prettier places than Pyke, Yara knew, less cold and wet and miserable places, less raw and inhospitable. Was that the North? Time and again, he would run back to Winterfell, and the last time Yara had bid him go to fight the dead. He had done so, but was a spear through his abdomen not enough for him to have had his fill?

"It wasn't a _ demand,_" Theon said. Yara halted and turned her head to look at him. There was a force in his voice that caught her off-guard – one she hadn't heard since he first returned to Pyke during Robb Stark's war, but different still from then. It wasn't the brash, entitled arrogance of a boy, but quiet and resolute and entirely aware of itself.

He continued in a lower tone. "Sansa gave me an offer. To serve her in Winterfell. To serve the North." _ He knows he needs my leave, _Yara realised, _ but he's willing to fight for it. _

Yara resumed her pacing, but kept her eyes on her brother. "Remind me what has happened every time you've gone to Winterfell," she responded harshly. "Are you so desperate to die there?"

Theon clenched his jaw and looked away from her, silent. Yara stopped again and sighed. She was angry, that was true. She understood what drew him back to Winterfell, again and again, how central the old walls were to his life, the need he had to pay some debt to the North. But that was not to say she agreed. Theon might have felt some love for the Starks, and felt that he owed his life and servitude to them – to Sansa, in particular – but Theon was ironborn. He was a man of the Iron Islands, of the Drowned God, of the _ sea. _What good would it do him to spend his life so landlocked?

"We aren't at war," Theon said finally. He met his sister's eyes again, his brow furrowed. "I'd go to serve, not to die."

"Once you went to _ rule, _not to die. Do you remember what happened?" Yara ground her teeth together. She knew what he wanted from her – simple permission to go. To swear himself to the Queen in the North, to pay the debt that, for all Yara could see, had been paid more than in full when he took the spear for Bran.

Yara willed herself to give it to him. It was a callous truth that Yara did not _ need _ Theon with her to pursue her goals. She knew that she could rule the Iron Islands and secure their independence on her own. If Theon swore himself to Sansa Stark, it would not be a betrayal of Yara – her queenhood was independent as much as Sansa's was, and she would remain Theon's sister. _ But how many times have I lost him to the North? _

"I'm not a boy, Yara." Theon held her gaze steadfastly. Yara opened her mouth to retort, but Theon went on. "I know – what's happened before. I know it better than you do. But there's a place for me there." Yara scanned his expression, his creased brow and set mouth. There was no need for him to finish the statement, she thought. _ A place he's never had before. _

Yara exhaled heavily and turned from him, moving to the table and gazing down at the letters scattered across its surface, old ones from before her voyage that she hadn't bothered yet to burn. She was silent, and so was Theon.

"Go, then," Yara said finally. "I won't stop you."

Theon said nothing, but Yara watched his shoulders relax, Sansa's letter held loosely by his side. He _ did _look well – well enough to sail to the mainland, well enough to travel to Winterfell. Well enough to bend a knee. He didn't smile yet, waiting for Yara to continue.

Finally, grudgingly, she turned the corner of her mouth up. "Sansa Stark has a place for you. It had better be as sweet an offer as she claims." There was no use to having him resent her. If Theon returned to Winterfell, again and again, if he _ chose _his place there, she would allow it. 

_ But if they have him throw his life away for another Stark, I'll raze the bastards to the ground. _

*

The hearth had never been quite enough to warm the solar in full. If she wanted comfort, Yara had to sit right by the fire, in the stiff chair Balon had spent so many days in. 

She had shed her armour, tossing the iron breastplate across the floor to land heavily at the side of the hearth, and sat there in her father's chair long after Theon departed. After some hours she began to drift into sleep, her head resting semi-comfortably against the high back of the chair. The rest was sorely needed. The end of a voyage always seemed to be the most draining part; her sleep was dark and dreamless.

Yara finally stirred when footsteps in the solar alerted her to another presence.

"Your Grace." Darrik Pyke's voice roused her fully. 

Yara drew her brows together and pinched the bridge of her nose sharply, shaking the sleep from her bones. She pushed herself from the chair with a huff and turned to face him. She had not slept for long, it seemed. Darrik had cleaned the grime and sweat from his face since their arrival on Pyke, but he had not changed his clothes beyond removing his own armour, and his need for rest was apparent. His eyes were shadowed with dark, purplish circles.

"A bird came," he said.

Yara's response was sardonic and gruff from sleep. "From Queen Sansa?"

"No. King Bran."

Yara frowned and crossed the solar in a few long strides, taking the scroll from Darrik's hand and tearing it open carelessly. Darrik stood still and silent, trying to look disinterested. Yara scanned the message, penned near entirely in Tyrion Lannister’s ornate hand. Bran Stark’s signature was fine and precise at the bottom of the paper. Yara shut her eyes and lowered her head. 

"Cunt," she said finally. 

She opened her eyes and crumpled the letter in her hand, crushing it into a tight ball in her fist, not caring for the way the rough edges sliced her palm. She strode back to the hearth, pausing only for a moment before letting the crushed paper fall from her fist into the fire.

Darrik spoke reluctantly, masking his curiosity. "Yara?"

Yara placed her hand against the mantle of the hearth, bracing her weight against it, watching the king's letter curl and blacken in the flames. She addressed Darrik in a low voice. “When you were a boy, did your mother tell you of the old Driftwood Kings? Tell you how far the ironborn territory stretched on the mainland, how much power we had?”

Darrik was a thrall’s son. His mother had been a greenlander stolen in a raid and kept for a salt wife, but she had been a clever one – a woman who kept her guard and adjusted quickly to the Iron Islands. Yara knew she had raised Darrik to succeed on the Iron Islands. Whatever convictions the woman held from her own start in life, she had the sense to throw to the wayside for the sake of her son. He had been raised as ironborn as if his lord father had kept him in his own household, in the meagre little keep that only barely earned him his noble title.

Darrik crossed the solar slowly to stand across the hearth from Yara. “Aye.”

“Aye,” Yara murmured, “and now we’re treated as disobedient dogs.”

She dropped her hand from the mantle and rested it on her belt, tensing her jaw before she tore her gaze from the burning letter to meet Darrik’s eye. “Bran the Broken will grant our little wish for independence,” she said, mockingly, “if we behave ourselves and follow the crown’s rules. Is that independence?”

“You’d rather take it by force.” Darrik’s tone was impassive, but Yara thought he sounded rather more enthusiastic about that idea.

“No,” she sighed. Darrik would follow her regardless of what path she took. She looked back into the flames. Nothing remained of the letter but ash, but she remembered its words well enough. The conditions of her queendom rang in her ears.

“I agreed to those terms once before,” Yara murmured. “Enough reaving, enough raiding. Enough piracy, and attacks on the mainland. Enough rape and murder.” She turned back to Darrik, lifting her chin. She could not keep the seething out of her voice. “I agreed to those terms for Daenerys Targaryen, that she would help us, that she would overthrow Euron. And she did – burnt his fleet. I would accept their conditions for _ her. _Not the little Stark king.”

Darrik stood silent, listening, accepting.

“They mentioned her,” Yara said. She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “That we remained loyal to her, as if that was a bloody fault! They want gold and men from us for that, to join their little rebuild project in the capital.”

“How many?”

“A thousand.” Yara forced a bit of humour into her tone. “Quite a large rebuild, then.”

She turned from him and set to pacing around the dim solar. To be punished for integrity infuriated her, but what could she do save accept the conditions like a meek little subject? The other options were difficult and bloody, likely doomed to failure considering Bran Stark’s gifts. And Yara’s men would remain loyal, however pathetic the path she took was.

“I’ll write to accept,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Aye, Your Grace.” Darrik paused, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “But you’ll tell them what you think.”

Yara halted her pacing and looked at him. She curved her mouth into a slow smirk.

“Aye. Exactly what I think.”

*

Yara did not return to Daenerys’s chamber until the following morning, both taking and giving the opportunity for uninterrupted sleep. The Targaryen queen would likely be grateful for the peace in which to plan, too – she could make no advances on the crown before she retrieved her armies. Daenerys would have a great use for the iron fleet before long, Yara supposed wearily.

It was not that Yara had changed her mind about Daenerys's cause. She had pledged her loyalty – she had vowed to keep the queen safe and to assist her in recovering her forces and her throne, and Yara intended to keep those promises. But if the raven sent from King's Landing had made anything clear, it was that Yara's presence on the Iron Islands was required more than ever, to rule and to reform, and it would be no easy task to split herself between Daenerys Targaryen and her own queendom. It was a tiring thought.

Yara rapped her knuckles sharply against Daenerys's chamber door, and half-heartedly hoped that the Dragon Queen had some fantastic plan hatched to put Yara's worry to bed. 

Wex Pyke opened the door, silent and wide-eyed. He stepped aside to let Yara enter the chamber.

Daenerys was standing by the slit of a window, both hands resting on the stone sill. From behind, she seemed unrecognisable. Her silver hair ended at the nape of her neck, the uneven ends brushing the collar of her roughspun, outsize tunic. When she turned to face her visitor, Yara saw that her boyish crop made her face seem softer and rounder, and the crease in her dark eyebrows more prominent. She seemed alone and vulnerable, and looked younger than Yara had ever seen her.

Yara cleared her throat and nodded once to Wex before she stepped towards Daenerys. "Your Grace."

"You want to know if I've made my plan," Daenerys said, lifting her chin and forcing her features into a mask of serenity. Her voice was still sharp, perceptive and commanding, but the new vulnerability in her appearance betrayed it.

"It sounds to me like you have not." It was not unreasonable to incline towards pessimism, Yara thought, curving her mouth into a wry smile. There was little to be optimistic about.

Daenerys held her gaze for a moment, then sighed and allowed her shoulders to sink. "I have not," she admitted. She clasped her hands in front of herself and moved from the window towards Yara slowly. She parted her lips and looked for a moment as though she would say something else, but only closed them again. 

Yara could guess what Daenerys might have said, anyway. She had always had some foothold on the world, Yara supposed. Years ago, even in exile, she'd had her elder brother Viserys, the Beggar King; after him, her horse lord husband; her dragons, her freedmen, her advisors, her people. Daenerys had always had some little spark of power to fan into a flame – what had she now but rock and sea and sky? Yara found power in those things, certainly, but they were hardly ingredients for the Dragon Queen's reign.

Daenerys was still looking at her. The realisation stunned Yara. _ She relies on me now. _

Finally, Yara responded, her dry smile firm in place. "Fortunate." Better for Yara that Daenerys had no immediate need of her ships, and better for Daenerys that Yara had other duties than pushing her for a scheme. "Another voyage would have had to wait."

She gestured towards the bed. Daenerys sat on its edge, while Yara moved to lean against the wall opposite, folding her arms loosely across her chest. "I had a letter from King's Landing. Bran Stark is willing to grant our independence."

"I'm pleased for you." If the reminder of the boy on the throne had aggravated her, Daenerys did not show it.

"Not without catches. Reparations for the war. Changes to our way of life."

Daenerys lifted her eyebrows. "You swore to change your way of life not long ago," she said coolly. Yara gave a short laugh.

"I did," she said, "and I meant it. But promises are easy to make."

Yara turned her head, glancing out of the little chamber window. A fog had settled on Pyke; there was little to be seen but grey.

"My grandfather tried to change our way of life," Yara said. She met Daenerys's eyes once more. "Quellon Greyjoy. Everything you asked of me, he put to law. And my father had it undone instantly. We name it the Old Way for a reason, Your Grace. The ironborn have lived this way for thousands of years. I can promise reform, but words come quicker than change."

Daenerys watched Yara as she spoke. _ Considering it, perhaps, _ thought Yara. _ Or wondering if I am as much a liar as the rest of her former allies. _

Yara was silent for a moment, then cocked one eyebrow, prompting the queen to speak her mind. Daenerys lifted her chin.

"Change may come slowly, then," she said. "But it will come?"

Yara tensed her jaw, but nodded. "Aye," she responded with reluctance. 

Daenerys gave a nod and stood from the bed, stepping towards Yara until there was hardly a foot between them. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and firm.

"If you must change for what you want," Daenerys said, "then change."


	4. DAENERYS II

Dany quickly realised that she would be staying on the Iron Islands far longer than expected. With none but Yara Greyjoy at her side, and Yara's attention soon swallowed by Bran Stark's offer, Dany's path to reclaim her throne looked to be a slow and arduous one. But she was safe on Pyke, and the anonymity afforded to her on the island was a comfort when it became clear that any plan of action would take a long while to hatch. Before then, Dany thought, what else could she do with her time but become acquainted with her temporary home?

Pyke's stableboy had bridled a mare for Dany without question when she had asked it of him not long after dawn. Even if she was Dan the common girl, and not Queen Daenerys Targaryen, Dany supposed the personal attention openly shown to her by Yara was enough that she need not be treated entirely like any serving wench. Dany mounted the mare and set off through the castle gatehouse to explore the island.

The horse was an old nag, thin and slow, but it made no matter. A little extra unremarkability could do nothing but benefit her, regardless of how invisible she seemed to be already. Dany had thought her cropped hair to be a poor disguise. The rough hack was an obvious rushed job, and her hair shone unmistakably silver even without its length. But a few days in the seat of House Greyjoy had reassured her – visitors to the castle were frequent, both arrogant lordlings and demanding smallfolk, and Dany had seen two women among them with hair as bright as hers. Whores, she supposed, and using some concoction to bleach their locks unnaturally, from the straw-like quality of it. But whoever the women were, and whatever they had done to their hair, the similarity set her worry to bed. In any case, none seemed to suspect her. The only stares Dany received were lustful, not suspicious.

The longer strands of Dany's hair whipped her cheeks as she rode. The wind off the sea was a permanent fixture on the Iron Islands, but if the weather was brutish, it seemed to bother no one – men worked stoically in farmsteads as Dany passed, tilling the hostile earth while children ran around them, genders indistinguishable in their identical shapeless clothes and sensibly shorn hair. Beauty was an impractical luxury on Pyke. In a way, Dany found it charming. Strangers did not spare her a second glance; they kept their minds on their own lives, their families and difficult enterprises, and left her well alone.

Daenerys Targaryen did not exist to them – she was only a young woman in common dress, wandering the island alone, as much a stranger to them as any other passing face.

The sun was well above her, dim behind a blanket of grey cloud, and Dany was nearing the Lordsport harbour before she was approached. She turned her head to see Yara Greyjoy drive her own horse into step beside Dany's.

"Enjoying the view?" Yara asked, curving her mouth into a smile.

Dany returned her smile, and nodded towards the docks. "It seems you are not without friends." The harbour was crowded with ships, a few displaying the familiar gold-on-black Greyjoy sails but others unfamiliar to Dany, some low and unassuming, others grand with brightly-painted hulls and decks humming with crewmen.

"Trading galleys," Yara said. 

She slowed her horse, and Dany watched her gaze silently at the harbour for a moment, some unreadable expression on her face. It was weighing on her mind, Dany thought, Bran Stark's conditions for her independence. Dany followed Yara's eyes to the ships. _ Trading vessels. _To accept trade was itself a change for the ironborn.

As if she had heard her thought, Yara picked up her smile again. "They aren't selling their goods for the iron price," she said, "but the people will have to accept it."

"You work quickly," Dany remarked.

Yara laughed. "I do. But I did not have to invite them here. These merchants have a nose for gold, and the war made us one of the richest ports in Westeros." She glanced at Dany quickly, as if worried she may have offended. Dany kept her face still, and made no comment. She knew King's Landing would not be a hub of commerce again for some time, but she did not dwell on the thought.

"The traders are easy," Yara continued after a moment. "The ironborn will be harder."

Yara urged her horse on quicker, and Dany followed. Yara led them past Lordsport, trotting downhill along a dirt path until the soil turned to rock and the shore came into view past dunes and struggling saplings. A barefoot man in loose grey robes stood by the water, smallfolk standing and kneeling around him.

Yara spoke as they rode, of her plans for reform and of those who had undermined them already. Men had set upon traders, she told Dany, young lads with everything to prove.

"'We'll pay no gold price,' they said," Yara told her. "We could be independent, a free and independent kingdom, and it would mean nothing to them without the Old Way. They want me to be my father, and I will not. My father fought and lost. 'Aye, but he was ironborn,' they said. 'Proper fucking ironborn!' I broke their ugly little noses myself."

Daenerys laughed in surprise and amusement, and Yara glanced at her, her absorption in her own aggravation broken, before she laughed too. "They'll be hard to convince," Yara said, "but a fist is as good as a speech."

"Perhaps they should have thought of that before speaking to their queen in such a way," Dany said.

"Aye," Yara smiled. "Perhaps."

She looked towards the small crowd on the shore, and Dany followed her gaze. The grey-robed man bent down by the shore, dipping a skin into the water. He straightened and brought the waterskin high, letting the brine trickle from its mouth onto the up-turned face of a kneeling boy. His lips moved, but the wind stole his words before they reached Daenerys.

"Blessings," Yara explained, "of the Drowned God."

The kneeling boy spoke something in return to the barefoot priest. "What is dead may never die," Yara said.

Suddenly, Yara swung off her horse, taking its reins in one hand and offered her other up to Dany. Dany raised her eyebrows.

"Am I to join them?" she asked.

"If you like," said Yara. Dany glanced at the ironborn on the shore, then took Yara's hand and dismounted her mare. Yara tied the two horses' reins to a thin, half-dead tree while Dany stepped towards the sand.

_ I am not one of them, _ Dany thought, as she watched a young red-haired woman kneel before the priest. She watched the drowned man mouth his words, and the water darken the kneeling woman's hair to the colour of rust. For all her ironborn garb, Dany was an outsider. She was reborn in smoke and flame, not in salt water. She stood naked in glory while others knelt to the Unburnt, she did not kneel herself. But Pyke was as much a home as she had for now, and Daenerys had never shied from integration.

Yara stood by the rocks, crossing her arms loosely, and watched as Dany joined the group on the shore.

When the priest came to her, Dany saw he was younger than he had seemed from afar, but no less haggard. He could not have been older than thirty, but his skin was weathered and windburnt, his pale eyes deep in hollow sockets.

"Your name?" he asked her gruffly. She was only another face to him – he did not know, or did not care, if she had come from the Iron Islands or elsewhere.

"Dan," she replied. Slowly, Dany lowered herself to her knees, feeling the damp sand mould to their shape. She tilted her face up as the priest raised his waterskin, glimpsing the clouds break for the sun before she closed her eyes.

"Let Dan your servant be born again from the sea, as you were," the drowned man said. A stream of icy water hit Dany's forehead, soaking her hair, running over her eyelids. "Bless her with salt, bless her with stone, bless her with steel."

Dany opened her eyes, blinking the sting of salt from them. The drowned man looked down at her, his heavy brow furrowed, waiting for Dany’s response. Dany bit back her impulse to glance at Yara, standing far from the group, watching Dany's blessing. _ Is this her welcome to me? _ Yara was not one for empty courtesy, nor any soft words at all. _ The sea is her home. She has made me part of it. _The salt burn in her eyes, Dany thought, was Yara’s kindness.

Dany let the water drip from her cheeks and spoke the words Yara had given her. "What is dead may never die."

"What is dead may never die," the priest said, "but rises again, harder and stronger."

*

Half a moon later, Yara held a feast in the Great Keep of Pyke. She had accepted Bran Stark's offer of conditional independence, and with her plans for the Iron Islands' reform already in motion, it was time for the news to be broken to the other lords and captains of the ironborn. She did not expect the news to go down smoothly, she told Dany, but she was their queen, and a little foul-mouthed dissent was not more than she could handle.

Foul-mouthed dissent there had been – Dany, sitting far from the dais in the thick of the rowdy guests, had forced herself not to flinch when the roars of protest went up. The bowls of thin eel stew set at each tableplace were forgotten at Yara's announcement, and many of the men in the hall shot up from their seats to shout above the din. The scarred brute of a man seated next to Dany had almost knocked his cup of ale over her as he pounded his fist on the table. 

Dany slid surreptitiously along the bench away from him. Yara had given her one dress – a heavy, woolen thing in a deep navy blue, but shapely and sleeveless with a neckline cut prettily – and Dany did not intend to have her only respite from the ironborn sacks ruined.

The stew was cold by the time Yara had calmed the hall, but she calmed it all the same. Dany watched her, half the hall away from her, and noted the way she spoke. Loud, confident; calling up both peers seated before her and ironborn legends of old; intermittently goading and inspiring the grumbling crowd. The protests died and the guests deferred to their queen.

When the talk had shifted to less serious subjects, and most guests were deep into their cups, Dany stood from her seat and stole down the hall towards the dais. The places of honour by Yara's sides were filled, but some had risen from the lower tables nearby, and Dany soon found an empty place to fill. The man beside her was one she recognised – a crewman of Yara's, Darrik Pyke, tall and dark-haired and stone-faced. _ He knows me. _

Dany allowed a serving girl to fill the cup before her. She took it and lifted it to her mouth, addressing Darrik before she drank. "I would speak with her."

Darrik muttered an almost inaudible 'Your Grace' and swiveled slightly to face Dany properly. He cast a glance at Yara, talking and laughing with some wench standing by her chair, and met Dany's eyes. "Be waiting a while," he said.

"Then I shall wait." Whether it had been her journeys through Pyke amongst the common folk during her stay, or the pride and resolve in Yara's speech, or the blessing on the shore weeks before, something had set Dany's mind. She had no plan of her own as yet to restore her own throne – but Yara Greyjoy did. If Daenerys Targaryen was to stay on the Iron Islands, amongst a people itching for freedom, she would join their charge.

It could be a truly noble cause. Not just for the final prize, but for the byproducts of reform. A people who longed for freedom were chained to begin. Amongst the brave captains and fierce leaders populating the Iron Islands, Dany had seen just as many thralls and beaten commoners. They were not the sort of slaves she had known in the past – they wore no collars, their children were born free, they owned lands and livestock of their own – but all the same, she thought, there were more bonds to cut here. _ There are more wheels to break. _

Dany glanced down the length of the hall. From the dais at the very end, the hall stretched long and full before her, and the crowds of ironborn seemed to melt into one entity of revelry and ferocity. "They did not fight her very hard," Dany noted. They had fought Yara on her news, that was true, on the idea that they must swallow their anger and accept the conditions from King's Landing gracefully, that they must give up a way of life that was as much a point of pride on the Iron Islands as it was a point of condemnation on the mainland. But still, the hall had been beaten to a hush before any true violence broke out.

"No," said Darrik. He kept his eyes on Daenerys. "They'd fall on their swords for her if she asked."

Dany turned the corner of her mouth upwards and lifted her cup to drink. _ As they should_, she thought. Yara might have taken her queendom with force. The mainland was weak from war, and ripe for another from an advantageous position – but Yara had seen tumultuous times for the Iron Islands, Dany knew, and if she wanted independence as much as Balon Greyjoy had, still she plotted a second course. If what Yara had told Dany about her father was true, Balon had been a bold and courageous warrior, but a weak and thoughtless king. Yara was a warrior and a queen both.

Dany thought to her first meeting with Yara, in the Great Pyramid of Meereen. Yara had come with her younger brother, Theon – Dany had not seen him since her arrival on Pyke, but she remembered his wounding in Winterfell, and was surprised at her own gladness to hear he had survived. _ Not many did. _He had returned to the seat of the North, Yara had told her, to serve Sansa Stark, a queen in her own right. It prickled Dany, another Stark's unhindered success, but it was not Theon nor Sansa Stark that she kept her thoughts to.

Yara had warned her of Euron's intentions, asked for her alliance instead. Euron would demand her hand, she had said, and assured Daenerys that, in any case, hers was the righteous cause.

"And I imagine your offer is free of any marriage demands?" Dany had asked, half-amused.

"I never demand," Yara had replied, "but I'm up for anything, really."

Dany swirled the ale in her cup and wondered idly, if that had somehow come to pass, some queer sort of marriage between the two women, what may have changed? _ Would I have sat in this hall long before now? _ Her eyes roamed the clustered guests, women singing, men laughing raucously. _ Or might I have sat the Iron Throne, with her by my side? _

Pyke or King’s Landing, would the war have had some radically different outcome? Dany felt safer now in Yara’s halls than she had in a long while. The comfort lent itself to idealistic speculation. Might the Starks have sworn fealty to the Targaryen-Greyjoy rulers? Might Dany’s losses have lived, might Jon Snow have been no more than a sullen background figure?

It made no matter, she supposed. She was on Pyke now, with chambers of her own and little Wex Pyke for a cupbearer, and the Iron Throne was molten steel. Her _ what if _ had not come to pass – but Daenerys had her purpose still, and another now too in the ironborn reform. _ I will inform Yara of my intentions. _

Dany looked around again, past Darrik's eyes to Yara in her high seat. Dany recognised the wench now, the girl who had stood laughing by her chair. Nym, the doe-eyed maid Dany had met on first arrival to the Bloody Keep, whose gaze had passed disinterestedly over Daenerys to stare at Yara in what Dany had named intimidation. As Yara pulled the girl into her lap, Dany recognised the look in Nym’s eyes for what it was – adoration and infatuation. The wench tossed her thick, dark curls over one shoulder as she settled her arms around Yara's shoulders, laughing again as Yara nipped at the skin of her neck.

"Actually," Dany murmured, as she set down her cup and rose from the table, "I think I shall speak to her tomorrow."


	5. YARA III

"She wants to speak with you," Darrik had told her on the morning following the feast. Yara had known he meant Daenerys Targaryen.

_ I have not taken orders so quickly from a serving wench for quite some years_, she thought wryly as she made the journey to Daenerys's chambers in the Bloody Keep. The rope bridge was unusually steady as Yara crossed, with less haste than usual, but the thickness of the air promised a storm come evening. Yara resolved to visit the docks before the gales hit – the last storm had caused a wreckage against the rocks of Harlaw, that of a ship whose captain was not yet a man, and she would not much like to deal with another such act of childish, innocent foolery.

She doubted the storm was the subject of Daenerys's summons. Daenerys had no ships to protect – though if she did, Yara thought with dry amusement that the storm may well part in her path like a crowd of loyal subjects, allow the queen to sail unhindered. The request for audience was more likely to concern Daenerys's own plans. _ If she wants to fetch her Dothraki now, she can wait for better weather – and for this wine-sickness to leave me. _

Daenerys's chamber door was ajar when Yara reached it, perhaps in expectation of her visit, but Yara halted before it when Daenerys's voice floated softly into the corridor. Another voice could not be heard. It was likely Wex Pyke that Daenerys was speaking to.

Yara sidled closer to the door, peering through the thin gap into the chamber. Daenerys sat on the bed in a loose sleeping tunic, her legs bare and curled underneath herself. One hand lay on the bed furs, supporting her as she leaned on it, while the other was raised in animated gestures as she spoke. Wex sat on the floor, cross-legged and looking up at Daenerys with parted lips and rapt attention.

"...it is poison, they say," Daenerys told Wex, her voice low and gentle, "but the _ grass _ is their sea. All is done under the open sky, beneath the sun, or after nightfall, beneath the stars, fiery horses ridden by the spirits of great _ khals _and warriors..."

Yara stood watching Daenerys for longer than she kept track of. Wex listened intently as Daenerys's stories turned from her experiences with the Dothraki to those with the Unsullied, to her stays in Qarth and Meereen and Volantis, telling the boy of their foreign fashions and language, their spiced foods and exotic livestock. Yara listened with as much absorption as Wex. He had never heard such stories, she knew. The boy could not read, and had never travelled further than Great Wyk. The horse-lords and eunuch warriors would be as fantastic to him as gods and monsters.

After some time, Daenerys came to a pause. _Wondering if she must spare little Wex the gory details, perhaps. _Yara smiled at the thought. The boy had driven a blade through a man's ankle over a dice game not half a moon past – although it had been unnecessary to inform Daenerys, Yara had thought, of such a small misbehaviour.

Yara took the lull as opportunity to make her intrusion. She rapped her knuckles lightly against the door before pushing it further open and stepping inside. Wex scrambled to his feet. Yara gave him a nod and a slight smile before the boy fled to give the women privacy. She closed the door after him.

"Your Grace," she said.

Daenerys stood from the bed, pulling the outsize, off-white tunic further down to cover her bare thighs. Her short silver hair curled softly about her face. She looked not long from waking. Yara made an internal note to have food sent to Daenerys's chambers, after Yara's leaving, to break her fast.

"Your Grace," Daenerys replied, curving her mouth into a slow smile.

Yara brought her hand to rest on her belt. She wore no armour, but kept a dirk strapped to her side even while dressed only in dark grey wool, a habitual addition more than one of necessity. "Darrik told me you wanted words," she said.

"Yes. I wanted to tell you of my intentions." Daenerys clasped her hands elegantly in front of herself, looking as dignified and regal as was possible while half-undressed. She continued with her chin high. "Until I form my plan and take back what is mine, I am to stay here, on Pyke. I might well do with my time here what I can." Yara lifted her eyebrows, watching Daenerys. 

Daenerys nodded towards the small chamber window, vaguely indicating the Islands in their entirety. "You intend to enact reform here, to secure your independence. I would help you with that, if there is anything that may be asked of me."

Yara was silent, but slowly turned the corner of her mouth upwards. Daenerys was purposeful, she thought, and committed and resolute, but she was not single-minded. _ Perhaps she sees another little path to walk here, amongst rock and salt spray rather than her fire and blood. _

Daenerys parted her lips and hesitated, then took up her smile again, with a new, sly edge. "I'd have told you at your feast, had you not seemed so busy."

Yara creased her brow briefly before Daenerys's meaning dawned on her. _ Nym. _The girl was never far from Yara when she got into her cups – nor had been the girls Yara had kept before her, Tasha and Jenny and the Summer Islander who had run off with a common girl within a moon-turn.

Nym had lasted longer than that wench. She was steadfastly loyal, attentive and unhesitant, and often astonished Yara with her enthusiasm. Yara recalled taking her into her bed the night before, after her rowdy guests had departed, but remembered little of the details of their intimacy – only wishing the girl might stop her constant flattery, supposed to arouse, and be quiet, and allow Yara to better imagine another in her place with loftier dignity and fairer hair.

It did not seem proper to share her night's activities with Daenerys. Instead, Yara returned her smile and brushed the comment aside.

"I accept your offer, Your Grace," she said.

Daenerys gave a single nod, then lowered herself gracefully to sit again on the edge of the bed. She kept her eyes on Yara, her smile firm in place, and softly dismissed her. "Your Grace."

*

The cold winds were already rising when Yara reached the Lordsport harbour. Each ship captain she spoke to was aware of the impending storm, as Yara had expected them to be, and took visible offence that she had even thought it necessary to warn them. _ Better offended than shipwrecked. _

Yara poked fun and paid compliments to assuage the sailors' affront, and moved on to a rocky outcrop above the shore. She sat ahorse and watched the slow-moving, foreboding clouds, and the folk at work around the docks. It was too soon since she had announced her intentions of reform to notice any true change on the Iron Islands, but she searched for it anyway – for increased trade, for visible courtesy, some reassurance that her task may be easier than it seemed. She saw none, but sat and watched all the same. From the distance, her people were small and featureless but great in their community, one entity ebbing and flowing like the swelling waves.

She knew many by name, common folk as well as captains verging on legendary renown. Yara had spent her life amongst every kind of ironborn, had sneered at the sort of lords and ladies who kept fearfully to their pretty castles and highborn peers. Yara considered a night of dicing and drinking with rough, bawdy lowborn men to be one better spent than at any staid noble dance. Her attitude was not designed consciously to cultivate her people's love – that was only a pleasing byproduct of her own love of the boldness and variety of the ironborn.

But Yara was aware that, for all her pride in her attitude, her outlook was an uncommon one. It was for that reason that Daenerys's offer had surprised her.

Perhaps it was the Dragon Queen's poise that had clouded the rest of her character from Yara. Else, her authority, her beauty, or her titanic reputation. But Yara considered the interest Daenerys had taken in mere farmsteads on Pyke, the ease with which she approached those beneath her station as if they were lifelong friends, the immediacy of her warmth towards Wex Pyke. _ She mothers him, _ Yara thought. _ She'd mother all of them. _

And there was her blessing on the shore, not one moon past. In truth, when she helped the queen dismount her horse, Yara had expected Daenerys to agree to watch the worshippers, but to maintain her distance. Daenerys had not – she had crossed the sand to join the drowned priest and his group before Yara had so much as opened her mouth to explain the ritual. Whatever style of queen Daenerys had seemed before her murder, Yara thought, had not been the truth. She was as keen to be one with her people as others claimed she was keen to conquer them. Of all the allies Yara might have had in the Iron Islands' reformation, Daenerys seemed an extreme fortune.

Yara broke from her thoughts when a figure moved into her periphery. She turned her head to greet Darrik Pyke on foot beside her horse, dour-faced as ever.

"If you've come for a walk, the weather's bloody poor for it," Yara commented.

"Seems you're out in the shit as well."

"Do you think I'm scared of a little wind?" Yara watched Darrik shift his gaze to the sea; in the cold winter light, its steel hue was a near match to the grey of his narrowed eyes. Yara lifted her brows at him. "Well? Did you just come to sulk beside me?"

Without moving his eyes from the shore, Darrik slipped a hand beneath his cloak and produced a scroll from a hidden pocket. He extended it upwards to Yara. "From Theon."

Yara glanced behind herself, at the castle of Pyke rising distantly beyond Lordsport. It was not a short walk, if Darrik had taken no horse. "You couldn't wait till my return?" she asked in amusement.

Darrik sniffed. "I'll be shut in an inn when the storm comes," he said. "Best get my air while I can."

"And best get your ale when there's little else to do." Yara smirked and took the letter from him, moving her hand from the reins to break the grey wax seal and unfurl the paper. Theon's writing was cramped and uneven, a childish hand trying very hard not to look childish. 

_ Yara, _the letter read. 

_ I have sworn myself to Queen Sansa Stark as her guard and advisor. My place is at Winterfell but I can return to Pyke for a while if I must. Write if you have need of me. Sansa agrees. _

_ Theon. _

The letter was not a long one, but, Yara supposed, both she and her brother had always been frugal with words. Theon told her everything he had to tell. Yara reread the lines and found no hint of dissatisfaction – only duty, finality, and a closeness with the Queen in the North that, perhaps, Yara had not quite grasped the depth of.

Yara rolled the paper back up and tucked it inside her tunic. _ Let him be happy at her side. _If Theon thought his place to be in the barren North, in place of the barren Iron Islands, let his place be there. He was alive, and no more than a few days' journey from her; Yara would be content with that, if her little brother was.

In any case, if Theon's duty was to Sansa's plans, and not to Yara's, Yara had another ally by her side all the same.

"She has offered to help me," Yara said suddenly. "Daenerys." She looked at Darrik, below at her side. Darrik looked up at her. If he had been expecting her to speak of Theon, he did not display his surprise.

"With the Islands?"

"Aye."

Darrik would help her himself, Yara knew. After he had taken his position aboard her _ Black Wind _some years earlier, in the midst of the long-past War of the Five Kings, he had quickly risen to become one of her most trusted fellows. There was no question that, regardless of his own feelings about the Old Way and the fate of the Iron Islands, he would defer to his queen's judgement. It felt fair to inform him that much of her judgement may be Daenerys's instead.

Darrik was quiet for a moment, his gaze fixed on the sea once more, before speaking in a low voice. "She'll stay some time, then."

Yara looked at him sharply, silent before barking a quick, surprised laugh. _ Of course. _Her own ignorance amused her – she might have expected, even in common disguise with her shorn hair and ugly Iron Islands clothing, that Daenerys Targaryen would never be unattractive.

"And you'd like her to stay," Yara stated humorously. She had known her crewman had spoken to her, too. He must have, to pass along her request for audience. Perhaps Daenerys had recognised his desire – she was observant, Yara thought, and more than intelligent enough to understand a low tone and lingering glance – and perhaps she had slyly encouraged it for a little entertainment.

Darrik tore his gaze from the water to stare at Yara, indignant. She shook her head and looked at the shore herself, smiling, though underneath the amusement her tone was serious. "Whatever is said of her, she's a queen, Darrik. Best take some other woman into your bed."

Darrik would not take the status argument so easily – Yara had never been reticent about her own lowborn conquests. "How many serving wenches have you had?" he asked, scowling. His implication was clear; a queen was often, quite suddenly, not such a queen when faced with a desirable commoner.

"A few," Yara allowed, "but I see no serving wenches running to ask for my hand. And I am not Daenerys Targaryen." Daenerys could flirt, Yara knew, softly smile at the right time and prompt brave innuendos, but her bed was another matter, and her hand a priceless commodity. The more thought she gave Darrik's attraction, the more her amusement faded. Irritation rose in its place.

"Weather the storm in a brothel," she told him, "not an inn."

Darrik crossed his arms over his chest and turned, facing towards Lordsport rather than the shore. He seemed annoyed, even embarrassed, but his loyalty won out and he made no further protest.

Before he had gone ten feet, he halted and turned halfway back towards Yara. "Your Grace. If the Dragon Queen's door is locked," he said, "best tell the rest of your men. When you brought her here, you called it open."

Yara watched him turn again and depart in silence. He was right, she supposed grudgingly. Her men were as much opportunists as she was herself, and her explanation for 'Dan' had been hastily constructed at best. It would stand for most of the ironborn, but for Pyke's household and Yara's closest crewmen, caution would have to be taken.

As Darrik's figure receded, Yara glanced upwards at the blanketed sky, darkening to the colour of wet stone. _ It can wait until the storm has passed, _ she decided, and turned her horse to move on back to the castle.

*

"You said that I was your _ whore,_" Daenerys said. "Not a serving girl, not a common maid, a _ whore._"

Yara pressed her lips together. How the information had reached Daenerys, she wasn't certain. _ Maids' gossip, or a hopeful lover. _The storm was raging outside the castle – the gale whistled past the stone walls, and the sea swallowed the snow flurries as quickly as they fell. Yara had sought Daenerys out in hopes of perspective on her reform plans, and conversation to ease her boredom. She had found an ease for her boredom – in Daenerys's immediate cold seething. 

"I said you were a bedwench," Yara corrected.

Daenerys scoffed. "Another word for whore!"

Daenerys crossed her arms over herself, her thick eyebrows furrowed, and paced around Yara in her chamber. Yara exhaled heavily through her nose and remained still herself, only watching Daenerys.

"It was the best story, Your Grace. Offensive, aye," Yara said quickly, "perhaps, but practical. Would I set a chambermaid up in this room? Would I escort her around Pyke myself? Your hair was not the end of your notoriety."

"_Notoriety?_" Daenerys's pacing brought her beside the bed, and she sat down on its edge abruptly, her arms still tightly folded. She glared at Yara. She still looked commanding, Yara thought, and queenly, but in Daenerys's short, fair curls and full-lipped pout there was something of a petulant child as well. Yara pushed away any notion of a smile.

"I will not be called a whore," Daenerys declared. She raised her chin and met Yara's eyes intensely. "Many have called me a whore, Yara. It has not ended well."

"What would you have me call you instead?" Yara lifted her brows, challenging. "Claiming you were a bedwench – a _ bedwench_–" she emphasised as Daenerys opened her mouth to retort, "–was simple. Well-accepted."

"I care not what new story you tell," Daenerys replied hotly, "only that it is not entirely defamatory."

Yara moved to lean against the wall opposite Daenerys, and folded her arms across her chest to mirror Daenerys's own. She watched her through narrowed eyes for a moment.

"Defamatory of whom?" she asked. "Of lowborn Dan? Daenerys Targaryen is dead here." Yara paused, tightening her jaw, before she continued. _ She will have to take it. _"You don't get to choose, Your Grace. Do you have a crown? Armies? Dragons? I said what I said to keep you safe, and that was all of my duty to you. I am queen here."

Daenerys held her gaze steadily, but creased her brow further. "I don't get to choose?"

"You can ask. Not decide." Yara watched the queen. "I called you a bedwench, and it raised no questions. Denying it now would."

Daenerys's resolve was fading, Yara could see. _ She knows I am right. _ She had delivered hard truths to drive her point home, but they had done their work. Daenerys _ was _ effectively powerless – she may ask what she would of Yara, but, in the end, Yara was queen of these rocks. Her judgement would be final.

"That may be so," Daenerys said stiffly, "but I trust you can answer a few questions."

Yara sighed and glanced away briefly before returning her eyes to Daenerys. Daenerys was resolute in her offence, but there was a wounded look in her eyes, too. Yara unfolded her arms and pushed herself off the wall. She had been right to remind Daenerys of how little power she truly held, she supposed with reluctance, but if Daenerys's power had been stripped, her dignity need not follow.

Yara took a step closer to Daenerys and lowered her voice, diplomatic. "If," she said, "_if _I produce an alternative story, would you have me use that?"

"Yes," Daenerys answered simply.

Yara exhaled and nodded, averting her gaze and turning the corners of her mouth downwards. If questions were raised amongst her people, they could be shut down. Yara _ was _their queen. And if Daenerys had no further complaints about her hosting on Pyke, it was the least Yara could do.

"Alright," she said finally. "Alright." She moved across the chamber to the heavy, riveted door, placing her hand on the doorknob. She paused there and looked back over her shoulder, meeting Daenerys's eyes once more.

"Bedwench," she said, turning the corner of her mouth upwards. "I never did call you a whore."


	6. DAENERYS III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter contains sexual assault.

Change, as Yara had stated, was not immediate. 

Dany wandered Pyke more days than not, often braving hail and biting gales to mingle with the smallfolk market crowds of early afternoon, as had become her habit. Yara had coin enough to spare for Dany; she took it in a leather pouch at her hip to Lordsport and spent it cautiously, some days on fishwives' stew, some days on dice with elderly, gnarled men or with laughing young ironborn of blurred sex. She came to know many by name. Ulf, whose days of warmaking had passed with the loss of his left leg, kept a comfortable enough business as a tailor and often asked in good nature if Dany would let him cut her necklines lower. His mother asked perpetually if Dany had forgotten her sword; his two small daughters stood on tiptoe to touch her cropped hair and wonder how she had turned it silver. 

On the warmer, happier days, Dany found herself forgetting her name along with her islander acquaintances – for a little while it seemed enough to be Dan, a whore though she may be rumoured. It seemed enough to take nettle tea with innkeep Jo, and listen to her gossip of a small boat burnt by a jealous mistress, of gold-toothed Derron's bastard triplets, of men in love fled to the Summer Isles. A salt-sprayed wooden chair by the docks seemed a throne enough for an hour.

But as many friends as Dany made, as much fish stew and nettle tea as she bought, the black bones of the Iron Islands dirtied her periphery. She saw tired women, thin children and men simmering quietly in generational rage. Dany saw how change would help them all – livings made from the land they adored, security in their right to respect. The soil of the Islands was inhospitable, but not unmanageable, and she saw honest lives to be made there. Raiding was easy, she thought, but a little coin taken from another shore made its thief no happier. Their violence bred violence; a failed raid was grounds for another attempt, while a success warranted another before the good luck ran out. They all reaved and murdered, but the reward never lasted long. Blood did not water crops.

Long after Yara's feast and announcement of change, there was one raiders' ship yet to return. When its black sails were finally seen on the horizon, Dany did not hesitate to volunteer her company as Yara prepared to meet the captain at the harbour and tell him of the reform. The captain was like to challenge her, to defend his and his crew's right to reave. Yara would shut him down, but Dany had little else to do with her evening but offer her presence and witness the conflict for herself.

The daylight was growing thin when their party – Yara, Daenerys, and a small group of guards and servants – began the journey from the castle. There were few enough horses fed and shoed in time, and the younger men trudged behind the horsed party on foot. Dany sat close behind Yara in the saddle as she had done on first arrival to Pyke; her arms were loose and comfortable around Yara's armoured middle, her feet dangling free of stirrups.

"Common girls share," Yara murmured during the slow descent to Lordsport. Dany bit back her laugh and glanced at the men ahorse at their flanks; at Harren, young and fair and cocksure, and at Darrik Pyke, sharp and surly. She tightened her grip on the ironborn queen's waist. _ Let them think I am her whore. They are guarding me as much as her. _

By the time their party reached the docks, the sky was orange behind the thick clouds. It cast a dim sepia light across the harbour town, deceptively warm. Yara swung herself down from the horse and offered her hand to Daenerys. Dany took Yara's hand to dismount, then released it and pulled her dark woollen cloak closer about herself against the sharp breeze. Yara, as ever, looked entirely unfazed by the chill as she gave the horse's reins to a servant boy and sauntered away to the docked raiders' ship.

For lack of anything better to look at, Dany wandered closer. Crewmen carried barrels and bundles of cargo off of the deck to waiting wagons, or to set down on the cobbled ground for later transfer. It seemed they had been far abroad; Dany saw heaps of crumpled Myrish lace, ornate pottery, crates of spices whose scents transported her back to the trading places of Vaes Dothrak.

She saw new thralls, too, pulled bodily from the ship. Dany pressed her lips together and stood silent by the unloaded barrels as she watched. They were of varying ages, sexes and skin tones, but all were dressed in fabrics much too thin for the Westerosi winter, and all wore identical expressions of some mix of fear and resignation. The voyage had been long enough for that submission, Dany thought – the refusal and fight they may have displayed at the first was long past.

They were not slaves as Dany had known slaves. The thralls of the ironborn could hold land, could birth free children, were paid wages beyond food and shelter. The distinction between thrall and common ironborn servant was itself often blurred, and Dany knew by now that noble lords loved and laid with thralls as freely as with their highborn peers. _ All the same, _ she thought, _ they are by no means liberated. _

Yara stood close to the hull of the ship, locked in debate with the captain. Dany was too far to catch her words, and surrounded by men at work placing cargo around her, but she recognised the stiffness in Yara's shoulders, the curl of her lip as she spoke to the man. As predicted, he was a dissenter – he gestured wildly at the spoils of his crime littering the cobbles, met Yara's intensity with ease. _ But Yara shall win. _

A stooped, greying crewman, with more strength than a man of his years had any right to, set an open-topped barrel on the ground close to Dany. It was packed with swords in their scabbards, gleaming an evil silver, the hilts far too tall to have fit the lid back on the barrel. The ironman turned without a glance at Dany and returned for another load, and Dany bit her lip and returned her gaze to the ship.

Another woman was manhandled onto the cobbles, but Dany could tell she was not a new prize. She was wrapped in the masculine, roughspun clothes that characterised the fashion of the Iron Islands, and snapped at her harasser with the vitriol of one long accustomed to the Islands' men. The woman was a little thing – a Northerner originally, perhaps, but Westerosi for certain – with long, reddish-brown hair coming free of its braid in strands, and seething eyes. She wrenched her arm free of the man's grasp only for him to grab it again and shout something at her.

Dany kept to her position, out of the way of the conflict, but edged around the barrel of swords and stepped closer to catch the couple's words. She glanced at Yara – still deep in argument with the raiders' captain – before returning her eyes to the man and his captive. 

A small crowd was forming around them: crewmen and townsfolk alike, eager for a break from the mundanity of labour. The verbal portion of their dispute seemed to be over, but Dany thought the man's fingers were curled tightly enough around the woman's bicep to bruise.

"Letting the wench best you again, Lorren?" a crewman jeered. He grinned widely at the man – Lorren – as others joined his side and took up the taunts. "Aren't going t'remind her of the wifely duty?"

Lorren turned his head and spat upon the cobbles. He had pitch black hair and the sort of rough, evenly tanned skin that spoke of a life seldom lived indoors. He growled something at the woman, his wife, below the loud heckling, then spun her roughly and shoved her to fall against a stack of crates. She caught herself on them and swore, her auburn braid whipping from one side to the other as she turned herself to face Lorren. Lorren gripped her shoulder and forced her back against the crates with one hand, while the other travelled quickly elsewhere and began to rip at fabric. The girl screamed in fear and fury. 

Dany inhaled and took a quick step towards the scene before she halted. _ I have no dragons_, she thought. And then, _ I do not need them. _

The closest sword to Dany in the barrel beside her was a tall, thin thing; light, wieldy and miserably sharp. She grabbed its hilt and wrenched it free of the mass of steel before crossing the harbour to Lorren in short, determined strides.

The man froze as Daenerys Targaryen laid the steel against his neck.

"Leave her," she commanded. She had handled a sword only once – _ at the Battle of Winterfell, and it was not enough _– but there was little to it when it was already laid flat against Lorren’s throat.

He turned his head slowly, wary of the blade, to sneer at Dany. "What matter is it to you, wench?" His hand groped at his belt, but no sword hung there – he had left it on the ship, Dany thought, in his preoccupation with his wife – and he stilled his hand at his hip as though unbothered by his situation.

The woman had her hands braced against the stack of crates and her head turned to stare, wide-eyed, over her shoulder at the scene. Lorren was still too close for her to move to safety. Dany pressed the flat of the sword harder against his skin, tightening her fist around the worn leather grip.

"I told you," Dany said, her voice calm and composed, ignoring the tremors of anxiety building tightly in her chest, "to leave her."

Lorren turned fully then, slow and mindful of Dany's sword, to face her. He lifted his gloved hand to brace the back of it against the blade, but astutely did not push it away. "Ironborn will not spill the blood of ironborn," he said, with utter confidence.

Dany responded coolly. "Then it is a good thing I am not ironborn."

She stood there, unmoving, while Lorren's wife slipped away in the corner of her eye. When the girl had moved to a safe distance, Dany untensed her shoulders but continued to stare Lorren down, judging whether she could lower her sword or if his restraint remained necessary.

"It seems I've missed an event," came Yara's voice, breaking the hush that had fallen over the crowd. She approached Dany and Lorren with a casual ease, her dispute with the captain evidently won, but Dany saw her hand resting tense on her belt beside her own sheathed sword. Yara jutted her chin towards Lorren and addressed her party of guards. "Seize him."

Lorren opened his mouth to protest, but Dany's sword against his throat held him still. Yara's men were quick to the mark; Darrik Pyke seized Lorren by the upper arm and pinned him in his iron grip, while Dany removed her sword to let another two guards in to restrain him. Lorren bared his teeth in fury, but said nothing.

Yara approached him with narrowed eyes. "Lorren, is it?" She turned from him, scanning the crewmen, smallfolk and thralls forming a wide circle around them, until her eyes fell on the woman. "You're his wife?" Yara asked her.

The girl opened her mouth but made no sound. Her eyes were wide and anxious, but Dany saw no tears in them. She had pushed her reddish hair back from where it had fallen messily over her face, but her dress was streaked across the front with dirt and dust from the crates.

"_Salt wife,_" Lorren growled. Darrik smacked him in the back of the head.

"Salt wife?" Yara looked from Lorren, trembling with rage in his captors' arms, back to the woman. "What's your name?" Yara asked her.

The girl pressed her lips together, then straightened her back and lifted her chin. Her voice was low but clear. "Elyne."

Yara moved away from Lorren to stand before the woman, looking Elyne up and down appraisingly. Yara said nothing, but Dany understood that she was checking the girl for injury_. _Finally, Yara spoke in a much lower tone. "Elyne. What happened?"

Elyne closed her mouth again. Her eyes darted from Yara to Dany, to Lorren in the guardsmen's grip, back to Yara. She was reluctant to publicise her conflict, Dany thought – or concerned about the repercussions.

Dany cleared her throat. Her sword was still in hand, but its point rested on the cobblestoned ground, and she held the hilt far from her side. "This man would have raped her," she said simply. She gave a pointed look towards the crowded spectators. _ Publicly, _ she thought. _ Power and degradation, not carnal lust. _

Dany watched Yara's eyes narrow again and held her gaze resolutely, secure in her judgement and her protection of the girl. Still, she searched Yara's face for some indication of her thoughts. _ Does she think me right? Is she recalling her promise to me, that the raping would stop along with the reaving? Or does she think me a tyrant for this, too? _

"Cunt!" Lorren spat from aside. 

Yara broke her gaze from Dany's and turned towards Lorren, her upper lip curling. "Do you think you will endear yourself to me that way?" she asked him, her tone mocking. She closed the distance between them, standing almost nose-to-nose with the man while her guards held him captive and still.

"Do you call that woman your salt wife?" Yara did not glance towards Elyne, nor move her gaze from Lorren's weathered, snarling face at all. Dany looked about herself as the spectators shuffled in surreptitiously, straining to hear Yara's soft words. "It seems to me that she's your slave," she murmured.

"She is my wife," Lorren hissed, straining against the hands holding him back. "I took her from her dire fucking Northern town, I bound her to me, I paid the _ fucking iron price for her. _Your whore thinks I can't do what I please with her?"

There was a beat of complete silence, save for the ever-present rushing of the sea and the screeching of gulls sailing above, before Yara stepped back away from Lorren and raised her voice again. She intended the crowd to hear these words. "You had better hope the Drowned God is kind to you, Lorren," she said. "I won't be."

Her gaze remained fixed on Lorren, sharp as dragonglass, as she addressed her men. "Take him to the end of the docks and drown him."

Shouts of protest and anger broke out sporadically from the crowd as Yara's men hauled Lorren off, struggling and swearing, to the steps at the end of the harbour. Yara clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face the gathered folk, raising her voice to almost a roar above the clamour. "Do you think I was wrong?" she shouted, as the din fell. "Do you think I should have let that bastard rape her in broad daylight, in front of you all?" It was, in fact, no longer broad daylight – dusk had fallen heavily over Pyke, leeching the colour out of their surroundings and casting long, pitch dark shadows across the harbour town – but the crowd fell silent nonetheless. Yara paced slowly in front of them, her eyes scanning each face intently, before she continued, her anger ringing clear in her tone. "This is not who we are! This is what your hated greenlanders see when they look at us, and this is why the ironborn get such pitiful respect!"

She stepped back and extended her arm outwards, gesturing to her men with Lorren below the docks. They were little figures now, standing waist-deep in the shallow seawater by the smaller fishing crafts and rowboats. Dany tensed her jaw and lifted her chin as she watched Darrik Pyke force Lorren's head below the waves. Lorren struggled, beating against his captors' limbs as he tried to pull himself from the water, as the sea forced itself into his eyes and nose and mouth and, when he could no longer hold his breath, filled his lungs.

"That is not oppression!" Yara yelled. "That is justice! And any one of you who takes issue with my decision, who would stand with rapers and brutes before they stand with their queen, can take it up with the Drowned God themselves!"

Dany watched as Lorren's thrashing abruptly stopped, and his head bobbed peacefully upon the water. She turned her head to meet Yara's eyes, fixed on her and shining with something like admiration. Yara lowered her raised arm to her side. Dany glanced aside to see Elyne, her mouth set in a line of acceptance, satisfaction, or relief – whatever it was, she had made no protest whatsoever to her abuser's fate. Her pale hands were clasped in front of herself tightly, but her head was held high and she took no notice of the strands of auburn hair lashing her cheeks.

As the crowd dispersed, murmuring though they were, and as Darrik and his fellows pulled Lorren's body from the sea, Dany moved towards Yara. "Does she have a place to go?" she asked quietly.

"I doubt it," Yara responded. Dany cast a glance at Elyne again and tightened her jaw. She was free of Lorren now, but he had likely provided for her – the girl was not ironborn, and would have no means of living now that her captor was deservedly dead.

Dany met Yara's eyes again, and spoke softly but assuredly. "Give her one in Pyke," she said. "A chambermaid, scullery maid, laundress, I care not. If she is without a home, make her part of your household."

Yara held Dany's gaze and was silent for a moment before answering. "Aye," she said, "All right." Dany nodded, pleased, before Yara spoke again, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards. "Seems it's quickly becoming _ your _household."

*

The warmth of Dany's chambers was welcome upon her return, with Yara and her men and Elyne, to the castle of Pyke. Wex Pyke had lit the candles and the central brazier, and the dim orange light cast faint, dancing shadows across the stone walls and their thick hangings. The boy was standing, attentive, by the window, and straightened a little when Dany entered. Dany sent a quick smile towards him as she sat on the edge of the bed to pull off her boots in weary silence.

When only her bare feet rested on the smooth stone floor, Dany cast another glance over her shoulder at Wex. The boy stared at her expectantly from under a tangle of brown hair, waiting for instruction. Dany pressed her lips together and looked down towards the pouch at her waist, dipping her fingers into it to retrieve few coppers and a silver. She twisted to face Wex fully and held the coins out to him.

"Take these," she said. Wex widened his eyes before he stepped forward to snatch the coins from her palm. Dany turned the corner of her mouth up. "Go for the night. Dice, if you'd like." The evening had been a long one, and eventful – as fond as Dany had grown of Wex, with his silent presence and wild disposition, she would be grateful for the opportunity to think in solitude.

Wex nodded eagerly and bent quickly in what might have been a bow, before turning on his heel and rushing out of the chambers, one hand darting out to catch the door on his way past and pull it closed after himself.

Dany undressed fully after he was gone and slipped under the bed furs hastily. For all the firelight in her room, the chill of winter on the Iron Islands was persistent. Dany pulled the furs up over her breasts and rested her arm across her torso.

On arrival back to the castle, Yara had Elyne shown to the Kitchen Keep. The girl had claimed skill in cooking, and surely seemed happier with her place in the ironborn queen's household than she had been as Lorren's captive. _ This is what I came here to do, _ Dany thought. Bringing freedom and hope to those in Westeros who had none. _ I did not have the chance to do so until now. _

And Yara had not hesitated to follow with her order of execution for the raper – raper in truth, for Dany had no doubt that the incident in Lordsport was not the first one – and to make good on her early promises to Daenerys. _ That is not oppression, that is justice, she said. And she made them listen. _

Dany was suddenly acutely aware that, of all the Westerosi nobles who might have found her in Volantis, she was very glad that it had been Yara Greyjoy. The Queen of the Iron Islands had been no more to Dany than a brash, likeable ally on first sailing to the Seven Kingdoms, but since bringing Dany to her home, Dany had seen her for who she truly was. She was bold, quick-witted and sound of judgement; she commanded rooms and entire towns with the ease of one who had not been born to rule, but had fought for every grain of respect she was owed.

Dany pictured Yara again after her decision, standing tall and proud before the crowd of her people – _ though how they jeered her at first _ – and delivering speech they could not reject. Her authority, her courage, her power. Her visible strength, in tense biceps and powerful thighs; her forceful, determined voice, raised to carry across ships and storms; her dark hair whipping fiercely across her furrowed brow in the sea winds; the fitted iron of her armour, hard and masculine, but moulded to the queen's shape and curves.

Dany tensed momentarily. But there was no one in the room with her; she had sent Wex off to gamble as he pleased, and she was alone. She drew her hand up and slipped it under the furs, brushing her fingers down the skin of her abdomen to between her thighs.

It did not surprise Dany how agreeable the thought of Yara was to her. She had not been oblivious to Yara's smirking implications from the start, but since making her home on Pyke, her respect for the Greyjoy had grown in time with her observation of her. Besides her leadership and pragmatism, Dany saw in Yara attentiveness, passion, and as much depth as in the sea she adored. As Dany found her most sensitive places, it was easy to picture the ironborn queen with her – Yara's strong, scarred hands working in place of her own, Yara's murmured flirtations and tightly-muscled legs tangled with Dany's.

Daenerys would not be called a whore, and had sworn long before that she would take no man as a husband once she claimed the throne. _ But, _ she thought idly, almost amused as her fingers moved and she found her way to pleasure, _ a wife would not be so disagreeable, if she was Yara Greyjoy. _


	7. YARA IV

Night had long since fallen by the time Yara was able to retreat to the Sea Tower solar. After executing Lorren, the raper bastard Daenerys had apprehended, and returning to Pyke, long hours had been spent answering her men's agitated questions, accepting praise and deflecting anger. When all were sated, gladly or grudgingly, and Yara finally reached her bedchamber, she wasted no time before shedding her heavy armour and collapsing heavily onto the great oak bed beneath its heavy curtained canopy. She kicked her boots off to drop onto the floor beneath her and exhaled heavily, interlocking her fingers over her stomach.

Daenerys had retired to her own bedchambers without so much as a passing comment about the day's events, about Lorren's execution or her own bravery. It was nothing to the Dragon Queen, Yara thought – there had been some whisper of fear about her face as she had confronted the raper, in the crease of her brow and the tightness of her mouth, but no reluctance, no hesitation. 

Perhaps she was not the Dragon Queen, Yara thought – a warrior made so by the men and beasts she commanded – but a queen who was, if anything, insulted by her legendary reputation. Dragons were massive and terrible brutes, but they were dragons. Yara decided she had been mistaken to attribute Daenerys's power to her horse-lords, eunuchs and winged terrors. She saw her true power now, in her remembered image of the queen on the docks – sword in hand, jaw set, silver hair in windswept disarray, raising her voice and defending her ideals and keeping her word. In compassion, courage, and angry beauty.

Yara closed her eyes, then furrowed her brow and groaned as there came an immediate knock at the chamber door. She lifted her head from the worn pillow and squinted at the door. "Come in, then," she called, thinly veiling her irritation. She grunted as she pushed herself up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed to sit on the edge as the visitor pushed the creaking door ajar.

Nym slipped through the thin gap. The wench was draped in a translucent ivory fabric, hardly covering enough of her to be called a dress, with her dark hair half-pinned in a soft crown about her temples, the rest falling about her shoulders in waves. She curved her mouth into a coy smile as she nudged the chamber door closed behind herself.

"My queen," she said, approaching the bed with light steps.

Yara pressed her lips together and looked Nym over. Her clothing did nothing to cover her; its transparency made the girl's curves, nipples, and natural blemishes seem part of its design. Yara wondered with faint amusement how difficult it had been for her to reach the bedchamber without the male staff's propositions. 

Yara looked up to meet Nym's gaze. Nym widened her smile and crossed her arms loosely over her chest, careful to obscure nothing from Yara's view. Yara fought the urge to roll her eyes. 

"Not tonight," she told her. "Take an early night in your own chambers."

Nym's shoulders tensed and she furrowed her brow, parting her lips in affront. She took a moment to respond. "Why?"

"I'm tired. Take your leave."

The girl smoothed her expression back into composure and seduction. "You're never _ that _tired, Your Grace." She closed the gap between them and straddled Yara's lap, resting her forearms lightly on the queen's shoulders. Yara brought her hands to rest on Nym's waist, and cursed herself for the habit.

"I _ am _that tired. Take your leave – and put some clothes on," she told her. She tilted her face upwards to look at the girl's face; her full, pouting lips, her soft, bronzed skin, her wide, dark eyes. All of it, Yara realised without surprise, no longer held the interest it once did for her. Weariness was her excuse, but, in simple truth, it was not Nym she wanted.

Nym narrowed her eyes and retracted her arms, leaving only her fingertips on Yara's shoulders. She studied her face and pressed her tinted lips together into a thin line. "Tired of me?" she asked finally. Then, with saccharine sarcasm, "Would you have me send for the fair one, instead, Your Grace?" 

Abruptly, she climbed off of Yara's lap and crossed her arms tightly over her chest once more, turning away. Yara exhaled heavily in irritation, dropping her hands to rest on her thighs. Nym maintained all the qualities Yara had valued in her since the time she had taken her into her household – the wench was bold, enthusiastic, attentive, and adored her. Yet, similarly, she had remained vain, brash, overbearing, and had never attempted to veil her aggravating jealousy.

_ Have you ridden a dragon? _ Yara wanted to ask her drily. _ Have you commanded armies? Have you walked through flames? Have you risen from a grave the Northern bastard put you in? Were you at the docks this evening, was it you who gripped the sword, was it you who saved the salt wife? _

Nym turned back to Yara and spoke in a mock-musing tone. "But she _ isn't _a bedwench, is she? What is it you call her now? Chambermaid? Serving girl? Or honoured guest?"

Yara had known well enough the change to Daenerys's story would rouse suspicion – what whore turned suddenly bashful of being a whore? – but had believed the change would be upheld by all of her closest subjects. Now, the belief seemed foolish. Many around her were reliable in the extreme, like mute Wex Pyke and stoic Darrik, but Nym was another sort. The loose tongue that had attracted Yara had its evils all the same.

"Mind that tongue," Yara said warningly.

Nym scoffed. "That's what I came here to do, Your Grace, only you're_ too tired. _"

Yara felt her annoyance begin to make the hot, dark slide into anger, felt her neck flush and a low growling noise escape her throat. She pushed herself from the bed to stand, the wench remaining cross-armed in defiance before her.

When Yara spoke, her voice was low and calm. It betrayed no emotion – _ but I am queen, and she will fucking listen to me anyway. _ "Take your leave," she said. "And mind your place. I won't tell you again."

Nym scoffed and parted her lips to retort, but seemed to see something in Yara's stare that made her conviction waver. She closed her mouth, drew her sheer gown further across her chest, and turned on her heel to leave. Yara was glad to see the back of her. 

As she sank back onto the great bed, a sense of disappointment settled in her chest. Yara did not turn away a pretty face and a fine arse for little reason at all. Nym had aggravated her, that was true, but she had rejected her even before the girl had turned vitriolic – she found the wench's form no less appealing, her dark, adoring doe eyes no less attractive, but she turned her away for the simple reason that she would prefer another. It made her anxious to think of some nauseating romantic ideal infiltrating her mind. A lewd, bawdy drinking song had always been far preferable to a sickly ballad of chivalry and _ true love's kiss_. Yara wondered what would become of her if a pretty pair of tits were no longer reason enough on their own.

She contented herself with the decision that her tastes had changed – that she simply desired a power to match hers, a quiet force and hard-won confidence that put to shame a common bedwench's jealous ire. Nym's suspicious words concerned Yara, but she brushed the thought aside. Perhaps she did want _ the fair one _ after all.

*

When the letters came, Yara was hardly surprised. In truth, she had been waiting for them, she thought, for longer than she had been aware of.

A flurry of them had come at once, from seemingly every noble corner of Westeros, and lay blanketing the weathered solar table in ivory parchment like a covering of snow. They had come from the Reach, from the Vale, from Dorne, from keeps Yara had never bothered to memorise the names of, but the two atop the pile were the only ones Yara gave more than a cursory glance – from Winterfell, and from the Red Keep.

Daenerys Targaryen's enemies – for they _ were _her enemies, now – knew she was alive, and that Yara had sheltered her on Pyke. The messages were composed as polite enquiries, as if each sender could hardly believe the outlandish rumours that had reached them and asked only out of obligation, but Yara was not stupid. If they had not already sent clandestine scouts to verify the whispers, Bran Stark would know nonetheless.

Yara braced her hands against the edge of the table and looked up at Darrik Pyke, standing motionless and attentive opposite her. "Send for the maester," she told him. "Have him write back to all of them."

"What will you tell them?"

"That they're right." Yara straightened and dropped her hands from the table. "That Daenerys Targaryen is alive, that she is on Pyke with me, and that I have no intention of giving her to their 'justice'." Her brows were drawn together in tension, but her tone was firm, and she was sure of her decision. It would do no good to deny the fact, and, with cooperation, this might be handled diplomatically. _ If not, _ she thought wryly, _ we will hope that Drogon has a notion to return. _

Darrik nodded and swiftly departed to carry out his task. Yara gazed down at the scores of letters, pressing her lips together. She did not know how the word had spread from the Iron Islands – which of her subjects had connected the dots, which had sailed with the rumour to the mainland – but it made no matter. Nym had been suspicious, she knew, _ the petty, entitled whore. _But whoever had or had not contributed to the talk, Yara had known it to be inevitable. She had only hoped that Daenerys would have recovered her military strength long before the issue reared its head.

_ She has my strength, _ she thought, lifting her head and fixing her gaze on the fire burning steadily in the hearth. _ I'll handle this with caution and tact, with the courtesies these greenlanders love, and if that is not enough to protect her, I'll handle it with iron and steel. _

*

Daenerys sat, silent and impassive, across the solar table as Yara explained her correspondence with the Stark rulers. It was some time since the first well-mannered letters of inquisition after Daenerys's life – Yara's confirmation had been received, and an agreement reached to meet in King's Landing for a council's decision on the matter.

Though Daenerys reacted little to the explanation, Yara knew she was concerned. She had hosted her on Pyke long enough to learn to read the slight creases in her brow, the firmness of her lips, the microexpressions she could not hide from those who knew what to look for. The queen sitting opposite Yara was the image of composure, her tunic laced loosely and her platinum hair, grown some from her arrival, brushing its collar softly, but her hands were clasped tightly on the table in front of herself. Her jaw tensed and untensed.

"You will take me to King's Landing," Daenerys said finally.

"Aye," Yara responded. Her voice was low, apprehensive, but she had sent her agreement to the demand already. _ This discussion is a courtesy_, she reminded herself. It was becoming difficult to ignore her impulse to seek Daenerys's view on her choices before sealing them – she did not need it, and the Iron Islands were her own domain, but that Daenerys had inserted herself seamlessly into the reform was an undeniable fact.

Daenerys regarded Yara for a moment before she spoke. Her tone was simple, matter-of-fact. "And I will die there."

That stunned Yara. She furrowed her brow. _ Would she give up so easily? _ Though Daenerys had made little progress on a plan for regrouping, seeming to prefer introspection and the channelling of her energy towards Yara's cause for the time being, her conviction in her own path had not seemed to waver. Beyond the shorter hair and roughspun clothing, she seemed as regal and assured as she had in Volantis and, far earlier, in Meereen. _ Yet here she is, resigned to another execution. _

Wherever Jon Snow was now, in his frozen wasteland beyond the Wall, Yara hated him. She supposed that he had thought himself right to murder his queen after the decimation of King's Landing, and she supposed that his honour and righteousness went unchallenged by the deed – she had, after all, chosen herself to submit Daenerys to the council's judgement – but she hated him nonetheless. A dagger wounded more than a body. Yara knew that from Theon, from every crewman who had given his life for her, and from herself. Each time she bled, she felt herself grow a little harder, a little more iron. 

Daenerys would be frightened by the steel – she was the Unburnt and had survived, Yara imagined, more than her dragons might, but she could die. She had felt it once already.

"You will not die there," she said emphatically. She rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward across it, holding Daenerys's gaze with intent. Daenerys did not flinch, nor betray any modicum of surprise, but kept her eyes on Yara's and waited.

"I will take you to King's Landing," Yara said, "under my protection." She said nothing else. The words were simple, but sworn with a ferocity that, she thought, would make the bastards' weirwoods tremble. Her certainty would not be mistaken.

Daenerys held her gaze and nodded once.


	8. DAENERYS IV

Dany stood on deck, her hands resting lightly on the thick wooden rail, gazing absently at the grey waves. The sea wind was biting, but no more so than it was on the Iron Islands themselves, and Dany had grown as used to it as the natives. She did not recoil, nor lift a hand to brush back her windswept hair, knowing it would be in her eyes again within seconds. It was long enough to be clipped back now, she thought. It was unlikely that a great many feminine accessories would be on the ship, but Dany resolved to ask Yara nonetheless – at such a time as they were both a little less preoccupied.

Yara had agreed upon a meeting in the Red Keep within a moon turn, and so, within days, they were at sea. It had been some time since their departure, and though most days and nights had been spent on open water, with salt-preserved meats and casked ale for meals, and with beds creaking with each nightly motion of the ship, they docked once or twice along the southerly route. The crew and passengers felt solid ground for a few hours and brought new provisions aboard – sweet Arbor wines, and spiced Dornish food which disagreed with most of the men but which Dany ate happily, thinking of the warmest places in her history.

The rest-stops were past, now, and the Narrow Sea around them quickly becoming the Blackwater Bay. A host of vessels, smaller than Yara's great flagship, sailed at their flanks. Yara had not exaggerated the tenacity of her protection. The sight of the rest of their host, tiny as carved toys from this distance, swirled about with mist and salt spray, kept Dany's head high as they approached King's Landing. 

Emblazoned with krakens in place of dragons though the ships were, Dany imagined herself repeating her first voyage to Westeros. She had been apprehensive then, slipping into pockets of doubt between sparks of pride and glory, but had known all the while that her journey was one of homecoming and triumph. She had looked on row upon row of faithful Unsullied soldiers, whooping Dothraki, allied ironborn. She had watched her dragons, _ three _dragons, soar and dive about the fleet. She had been a righteous queen on her water chariot, having freed those people who followed her then, and sailing to free more.

When Daenerys forsook the daydream and remembered her true journey, she remembered that she was sailing to die.

Yara had promised Dany her protection, and Dany trusted her – she trusted Yara more, perhaps, than she had at all expected to trust her when she accepted her aid in Volantis – but what match was the Greyjoy queen for the rest of Westeros's nobles combined, if they chose in unanimity to execute Daenerys? Yara had power at sea, but the fleet with which they sailed to King's Landing was a small one. It was large enough to demonstrate defence of the two queens; it was small enough to avoid projecting an overt threat.

Yara was being diplomatic in her navigation of the situation, Dany perceived. Her correspondence with the Starks had likely been curt and candid, but she had raised no protest to their demands. She had given up the truth about Daenerys without a second thought, and had made little, if any, effort to negotiate on the matter of the council-judged trial. With a few words, Yara had felled the secrecy. Dany had felt the hot stares of her crew all throughout their voyage, and wryly anticipated yet hotter ones at their destination. Still, she had little choice but to trust Yara's judgement. She hoped she was right to do so.

Jon Snow, she thought with a tightening of her jaw, had been exiled beyond the Wall for his crime. That gave her some notion, some hope, that not all had thought her deserving of death. But if their issue lay in Jon's disloyalty and treason, in the dishonour of his action, and not in Daenerys's innocence, would they balk still at a true execution?

_ But nor am I innocent. _

Dany flinched at the sentence coming unbidden to the forefront of her thoughts. She grasped the deck railing a little tighter and stood there for some time, arguing with her own mind, calling herself a martyr and a monster and a mother and a _ mad queen _.

The memory had been pressing against the dark walls of her mind since her return from Volantis. The memory of the city below her and Drogon, surrendered, burning. The memory of its smouldering ruins as she spoke to her armies in victory. The memory of her Westerosi advisors' expressions – pale, stunned, sick. On Pyke, Dany had pushed those memories away. _ I was just, _ she told herself. _ Ruthless, but just. _Was ruthlessness not always one of her virtues? Ruthlessness had saved her own life countless times, and the lives of so many of her people, and ruthlessness had ended the tyranny of Cersei Lannister's reign.

The memory of ugliness in the wake of Daenerys's strength was unhelpful. On Pyke, Dany looked into braziers and called the flames power and beauty, and ignored the burning city in her mind. On Pyke, Dany watched lowborn children play and called them her own people, and ignored the still, silent, blackened children in her mind. On Pyke, Dany thought of justice, freedom and good, and reviled the idea of any other qualities in her past.

King's Landing grew before the ship as they crossed the Blackwater, and Daenerys remembered.

Her dragonfire had not reached the bay itself, but the waves lapping the shore were a sickly grey with dusty foam. Beyond the city walls, Dany saw ruined buildings rise like broken teeth against the sky, dirty and jagged. On the other side of the city, where the gate led onto the Kingsroad and the open country beyond, there would be graves. She had held the memory at bay for too long, she realised. Revulsion threatened to overwhelm her.

"Your Grace," Yara murmured. Dany had seen her step into her periphery, but kept her eyes fixed on the wounded city ahead. Yara glanced her over before following her gaze to King's Landing. "Do you trust me?" she asked, her voice low.

"Yes." Dany's answer was immediate. She took hold of the blackness inside her and pushed it down, smothering it in tight-lipped determination, and turned to face Yara.

Yara's brow was furrowed, but she made no comment on the destruction they sailed towards, and if she suspected any of Dany's disquiet, she did not let it show. Instead, she turned one corner of her mouth upwards. "I should think so," she said, "after so long."

She extended a hand and touched Dany's waist lightly, directing her towards her cabin. "Change," she said. "A dress. There are a damn few cocks on that council."

Dany didn't smile, but as always, as she had been every day since Volantis, she was grateful for Yara's humour and her contact. It sealed another lid over her guilt and disgust. As Yara moved to turn back towards the water, Dany lifted her chin and caught Yara's hand, meeting her eye again. She held it a second, then released her, and left for the cabin to dress.

*

The ship took them from the bay down the Blackwater Rush, and docked at the wide expanse of harbour. A mass of tilted, haphazard buildings lined the city walls by the dock – Dany squinted at them, watching a few merchant smallfolk move tiredly between them, selling some fish but making hardly a dent in their stock. There were few buyers left, and fewer sellers; the jumbled huts were barely inhabited. Dany averted her eyes from the emptiness.

At the Mud Gate, they were met by a horsed party of guards and officials from the Red Keep. Dany did not recognise any among them, but from the cold, narrow-eyed stares from many, she judged that they knew her. She stood by Yara's side with her chin lifted and her hands clasped before her, projecting composure and masking fear. She met the eye of every member of the crown party, and refused to acknowledge that she did so mostly to avoid looking on the ruins of the city beyond the gate.

A rough, dark-haired man in dull armour introduced himself as Ser Bronn of Highgarden. Yara met him with a curt nod and took the spare horses offered, mounting alongside Dany and directing her men to follow Ser Bronn's party into King's Landing. As they moved through the gate, Dany wondered absently how a man with one name could claim to be "of Highgarden", but decided she was in no position to ask idle questions, and did no more than fix the back of the knight's head with a suspicious look.

Ser Bronn and his party led them ahorse towards Aegon's High Hill through streets cleared of rubble. Dany kept her eyes fixed ahead as well as she could, but the city called her attention at every step, and finally she allowed her gaze to drift over the exposed bones of King's Landing.

The day was cold and harsh, but clear-skied, casting unforgiving light over the city. Dany hated it. Broken stone and fragmented bone littered the edges of the street, and Dany hated it. Men at work rebuilding cast dull, poisonous stares at her, and Dany hated them. The city was half-dead – its population depleted to only working men, orphans and widows, and all of them injured mourners. They crowded like litters in the small portions of the city left unscathed, salvaged construction materials from the wreckage, skirted around the lingering rot in some hazy state of near-afterlife. They worked mindlessly and drifted around their new, broken, healing King's Landing as though they, the survivors, were ghosts as well. 

Dany imagined the new king and his council had provided relief by now, in imported food and livestock and migrant workers to aid in the mending of their home. She imagined they prayed nightly for Bran Stark's health and continued benevolence, so different to the tyrants they had known before. She knew now they counted her amongst their tyrants.

She curled her fingers tightly around the reins of her borrowed horse and shifted her eyes to Yara, mounted on a stout mare beside her. Yara met her eye and did not smile, but offered a lingering, tight-lipped gaze. Dany held it, watching the ironborn queen's face intently, trying to count the flecks of grey in her cool blue eyes even from several feet, but, as she resignedly expected, the city drew her focus again. She broke her gaze from Yara and returned her eyes to her reputation.

By the time the party reached the gates of the Red Keep, Dany's head ached. She held it high nonetheless and clenched her jaw, glancing over the castle as they entered its yard. She would appear strong, if nothing else – she would project the confidence, conviction and resilience she did not feel. _ I am still a queen. My Unsullied and _ khalasar _ still live, across the sea. This is a test, and if I fail, I will do so with dignity. _She grit her teeth and steeled her gaze.

Dany remembered the Red Keep as she had left it – in smouldering ruins, the ceilings caved in and all but the outer walls crumbled and fallen. Now, almost half a year on from her conquest, it was near enough rebuilt in its entirety. _ A priority, _ she thought, _ of course, a priority. _

Dany drank the sight of it in almost fearfully. Once, it all ought to have been hers. Dany no longer knew if she quite believed that, but nonetheless the Targaryen-built castle occupied some place of religious reverence in her heart. She remembered listening fervently to second-hand descriptions of it as a young girl, of memorising its layout in words alone, idealistically picturing the pale stone keep alongside the word 'home' enough that the two had become synonymous before she left childhood.

The Iron Throne was gone, Yara had informed her much earlier, but the hall that had housed it was fixed in splendour, re-roofed and seamless in its repair. Maegor's Holdfast, too, was as great and pristine as it had been since its design centuries earlier. Dany tilted her head upwards to gaze on the Traitor's Walk. The evil spikes were replaced, but stood free and clean of any mounted heads. Dany lowered her eyes before she could imagine herself there too vividly.

Castle staff approached to stable their horses. Dany dismounted as if in a daze. She tightened her jaw and narrowed her eyes. She reminded herself that she had not travelled so far, and survived for so long, to display weakness now. If the traitors' council defeated her, she would meet her fate with grace, and they would all know that they deserved it as much as Daenerys.

When all were dismounted, Ser Bronn stood before Dany and Yara, resting his thumbs in his swordbelt. "Maegor's Holdfast," he said, projecting as much nonchalance as if their conversation was of no greater significance than one held in a roadside inn.

His casual manner seemed to irk Yara; she gave him a hard look before she turned to Dany. "Your Grace," she said, loudly, and set off with Dany for the holdfast. Dany clasped her hands before herself and walked briskly, focusing on the steady rhythm of her steps, the brushing of the skirt of her dark dress against her legs, Yara's stoic presence at her side.

Her composure was hard-won. It was almost lost when they entered the holdfast, flanked both by Yara's men and by Bran Stark's guards, and were met by Tyrion Lannister. Dany's eyes travelled to the silver Hand sigil pinned to his ornate tunic, and she grit her teeth. Tyrion spared barely a glance for Yara, instead looking Daenerys over, his heavy brow furrowed. Despite his expression of mild concern, he seemed confident and assured. _ Perhaps he is feigning it as much as I am_, Dany thought wryly, without much true interest in the idea.

"My ladies," said Tyrion finally.

Yara stepped forward without hesitation, her voice low and hard and the contempt plain on her face. "You know well enough which title to use, dwarf."

Tyrion lifted his chin and met Yara's eyes. His frown deepened, but his shoulders relaxed. Provocation to witticism was his place of comfort, Dany thought with loathing, and that she had been his queen made no difference. Yara initiated verbal hostility – the man would seize the opportunity to shrug off his discomfort with defensive, self-congratulatory snark.

"Do I?" he asked, his tone dry. "Allow me to show you your chambers before you raise another independence petition." He raised a short arm and gestured along a corridor before waddling off along it. Yara looked at Dany before both, reluctantly, followed. Dany was seething, and did not hide it from her face. The dwarf _ ought _to see the curl of her lip and the fire in her stare.

Yara had warned her of Tyrion's position, of course – she had been thorough in Dany's preparation, and Daenerys was grateful for it – but the abstract concept of his being Bran Stark's Hand was a different matter altogether to seeing the turncloak in the ugly flesh, in good health and fine clothes and his gleaming silver pin. Dany fantasised briefly about Drogon's immediate return to roast the traitor where he stood.

Tyrion led the women and their guards to a generous set of chambers several storeys from the ground. Dany lifted her eyebrows at the rooms as they entered, newly furnished in rich woods and subdued colours. They were less ostentatious, she imagined, than the Keep had been under Lannister monarchs, but they were regal nonetheless. An open space held a hearth, plush chairs, and an expansive table for dining. A corner door led to smaller quarters for the most essential of Yara's men, while greater bedchambers, assumedly for the two queens, opened at the rear. They were warm and inviting. Dany held her suspicion close behind her teeth.

"The council meets tomorrow," Tyrion said from the doorway, curt and officious, "in the Throne Room." Yara had earlier described the arrangements made in her correspondence. Sansa Stark would have descended from the North; the remaining lords and ladies with a stake in the previous war would have joined her. A similar council, it seemed, to the one which had judged Jon Snow. Dany pressed her lips together.

"And I will not be kept in a cell before then?" she asked coolly. 

Tyrion looked between Daenerys and Yara, seeming to let a little nervousness shine through on his face. It pleased Dany to see it. "No," he said, finally. "You are not a prisoner, my lady." Yara tensed beside Dany. Dany lifted a finger by her side, almost imperceptibly, to halt her before she spoke on the title.

"I'm glad to hear it," Dany said. She clasped her hands neatly before her and kept her shoulders carefully relaxed, her voice low and composed. "And so I assume that these guards are not employed to keep me in these rooms?"

"They are for your protection as much as anyone's," Tyrion replied.

Yara spoke, her tone short. "She needs no protection from _ your _ men."

Tyrion pressed his lips together, seeming irritated. _ Impatient to leave, perhaps, _Dany thought. However uncomfortable the dwarf might have been, his retort was its usual measured, sardonic quality. "Perhaps," he said, "but we cannot leave it to yours. An unruly folk, the ironborn."

"A brave one," Yara replied, taking a step towards Tyrion. "A loyal one. Should I expect you to know that word?" She paused, staring the dwarf down, before lowering her voice to no more than a hiss. "I protect her, dwarf, _ my _men and I – the ones who remained loyal to our queen. I am Queen of the Iron Islands, now, and I no longer bend my knee to her, but nor do I bend it to your little Stark king. If you speak with your council of cowards before it meets, tell them the ironborn stand by Daenerys Targaryen. Tell them we stand where you broke."

Discomfort was growing on Tyrion's face – he looked aside at one of his guards, meaning, no doubt, to make his departure quickly. Dany glanced about the chambers again and thought of all the wry, withering remarks she might make to the man – about her titles, about gratitude to the king, about _ anything, anything that might remind him to whom he speaks. _

Instead, she fixed her gaze on Tyrion, and allowed her rage to fill her words. "My lord Hand," she said, slowly, her voice near trembling in fury, "you are an insect of a man."

Tyrion was silent, his brow lowered and his mouth set, but Dany saw the corner of Yara's mouth turn upwards. Yara moved towards Tyrion in the doorway.

"On the morrow, dwarf," Yara said, and closed the door in front of his face.


	9. YARA V

When Yara woke, the sun had not yet risen. Her expansive bedchamber windows in Maegor's Holdfast looked out on the Blackwater Bay to the east – the sky above the sea was dark still, but the horizon was tinged with a brightening copper hue, reminiscent of honey-wine, or a forge. Yara rose and dressed quickly. Though there was no true need of it, no danger to her own person in the Red Keep, she fastened her armour over her dark tunic and breeches. It straightened her spine, commanded respect, and would indicate to Bran Stark's council that she had not come to submit.

It had been her intention to rise early. Sansa Stark and her party had arrived some days before Yara's ships, and with them, Theon. If her brother had not yet risen, he was a light sleeper, and Yara had no qualms about waking him to speak with her before the council met.

He would be indignant, she supposed, at his having been kept in the dark about Daenerys along with the rest. He would argue that his recovery was no excuse, that Yara should have told him, that she should have allowed it to inform his decision to leave for the North. Yara was unfazed – she would reassure him, and she would have his support. However loyal he was to Queen Sansa, he would listen to Yara. He was still her little brother.

When Yara left her bedchamber, the tall door to Daenerys's room was still closed. She was asleep, Yara hoped, though for how long she had been, she could not guess. Perhaps she had found it effortless to drift off, or perhaps she had remained conscious long past midnight, anticipating the coming meeting. The latter would have been true if Yara had been in her position, loath as she would be to admit it. She would have found rest impossible, preferring instead to think, to pace, to plan, to dither between arrogant optimism and abject hopelessness, until finding peace in a flagon of wine just before the dawn, and meeting her fate in sickness the next day. Yara hoped Daenerys had found a better solution to restlessness.

Outside of their chambers stood two ironborn guards and two of the crown's, each faction throwing the other intermittent suspicious glances. Yara strode past them without interruption and roamed the corridors of the holdfast until she heard faint, lowered Northern voices around a corner – the Winterfell guards. There were none of the Red Keep's guards outside the Northern queen's set of chambers, Yara noted drily. She was well-trusted.

She rounded the corner and stood in front of the two Northmen. "My brother," she said shortly. The guards exchanged a glance, before the taller one stood aside to allow her entry, and directed her with a vague waving motion towards the door of Theon's room.

Yara let herself in and found her brother awake. Theon stood and turned immediately from his seat by the small hearth, his shoulders relaxing as he recognised her, but some stiffness remained in his frame. Yara shut the door behind herself before Theon spoke.

"Yara," he said. He paused, a muscle in his jaw tensing. "Queen Daenerys–"

"You're going to tell me that I should have told you," Yara interrupted, moving casually towards his vacated seat and settling into it. Theon made no verbal protest, but furrowed his brows in annoyance. Yara turned the corner of her mouth upwards and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs, her hands suspended loosely between her knees. "I chose not to," she said.

"Why?"

"You were leaving for the North. What difference would it have made?"

Theon moved to stand by the wall opposite his sister, his arms by his sides, hands curled in loose fists. He was dressed in Northern garb again, Yara noted, in a dark doublet and leather skirt above his breeches. His cloak hanging by the door, though embroidered with a gold-stitched kraken, was topped with grey fur. Theon watched Yara, waiting for some further explanation.

She exhaled heavily. "I would have told you," she said, "had you not chosen to take Sansa's offer. It was what you wanted, Theon, I would not add that secret to your plate. You would have nothing to hide in Winterfell, and Daenerys was safe. My crew knew, no one else." 

She paused. Her sole confidants had been Darrik Pyke and the rest of her closest men, but though she might never confirm how the rumours began of Daenerys's true identity, and later spread to the mainland lords and monarchs, they must have built on Pyke for some time before crossing the sea. "Some others knew, perhaps," she added below her breath, "but none I told."

"You should have told _ me_," Theon muttered, but his words held little conviction.

Yara pushed herself out of the hearthside chair. "Go on, have it back," she said, crossing the chamber to inspect his room. It was as large as her own, though it was as staid and sober too. Yara gave a wry smile and mentally thanked Daenerys for ridding the Red Keep of its old Lannister furnishings. The opulence would have unnerved her.

Yara lifted an untouched flagon of red wine from a heavy oak sideboard, turning to raise it to Theon. "Yours?"

Theon shrugged. "Have it." He was now perched on the arm of the chair Yara had vacated – hardly comfortable, but Yara said nothing. She did not bother with the cup left on the surface, instead lifting the flagon itself to her lips, and watching Theon over the top of it. He looked better still than he had on leaving Pyke, she thought. The limp seemed to have left his gait almost entirely, and he held his head a little higher, his neck a little less hunched. Perhaps the bracing chill of the North was a benefit to him.

After a moment, Theon spoke. "They'll execute her," he said bluntly.

Yara inhaled, then lowered the flagon to hold in front of her middle, resting her free arm back atop the sideboard, and smiled. "Do you think I'll let them?"

Theon eyed her apprehensively, and Yara deflated a little. Her confidence was genuine – she had, after all, protected Daenerys for this long – and it was necessary to buoy her through the trials ahead, but Yara was not fooling herself. If the king's council elected to murder Daenerys once more, there would be little Yara could do to prevent it but attempt to resist with military strength, and undo what little progress she had made in her gambit for independence._ An unruly folk, the ironborn. _

Yara lifted her chin again. Pessimism would not help her; she would feign what small part of her optimism she lacked, and it would do a great deal more for her than defeatism, as it had done so many, many, many times before. 

Daenerys did not deserve to die. Of this, Yara was certain. Yara had not been present for Daenerys's conquest of King's Landing – or liberation, attack, rescue, massacre, whichever words had been applied to the burning – but she had heard enough of it, and of the preceding days, to know it was no act of sadism. She knew enough of Daenerys to know it was no act of sadism. The Targaryen queen had spent her time on Pyke laughing with smallfolk, slipping coppers to sweet-toothed children, asking no deference or fealty. Whatever evil had been done in a single day, Yara thought, could not be judged without reference to the years of good it stood beside.

Not one member of Bran Stark's council was innocent of all crimes, and yet there they sat in judgement, in place of whatever gods might judge Daenerys truly. Half of Yara regretted her decision to approach the matter diplomatically. _ I would see them drowned before I bow to their craven decisions. _But she had come to King's Landing with too few ships to stage any forceful revolt, and she had staked too much of her own queendom's future on her willingness to comply. She was left now with the obligation to handle it their way.

Yara lifted the flagon of wine to her lips again, but halted it there to speak before drinking. "And Sansa?" She lifted her eyebrows at Theon. "What does your Queen in the North think?"

"I don't know what she thinks," he replied warily.

Yara smirked, drank, and lowered the flagon. "That isn't the sort of thing you speak about in her bed, then?"

She laughed as Theon stood from the arm of the chair and gaped at her. Yara replaced the wine on the oak sideboard and crossed her arms as she turned back to face him. "I have not been the only one keeping secrets."

"I don't–"

Yara would have none of his response; she anticipated it before he spoke the words. The subject was ever-damaging to him and, Yara was quite confident, irrelevant. She interrupted him with a brazen smile. "Do you need a cock to fuck a woman? I must have missed that lesson."

Theon cringed. Yara maintained her smile, but scrutinised her brother's face. She did not believe her assumption was wrong. Theon had a separate chamber in the Red Keep, perhaps, but Winterfell offered privacy. Yara had already acknowledged the bond between Theon and Sansa, but in her brother's absence from Pyke, she'd had the time to more thoroughly interpret Theon's short letters from the North, as well as to reflect on the past. On her brother's quiet insistence on fighting for Winterfell, and later, his poppy-hazed mentions of Sansa. He loved her.

Theon was silent and tense, his expression a mixture of anxiety and mortification. Yara relented. "I won't push you," she said. "It's your business, little brother."

Theon exhaled. After a beat, Yara creased her brow and uncrossed her arms, taking a step towards Theon as she returned to the more serious matter pressing closer.

"No matter what Sansa thinks," she said, "do you trust my judgement?" She scanned her brother's face and spoke lowly and earnestly. "I won't have them execute her. Whatever she did, whatever this city looks like, she'll live. I swore her protection and I mean to keep that promise. Will you stand by me?"

Theon hesitated, glancing briefly towards the door. He understood Yara's implication. To agree with his sister was an easy choice to make, but her unspoken request was greater – to use his Northern position, and advise Queen Sansa. Eventually, he met Yara's eyes, clenched his jaw, and gave a nod. 

Yara swallowed and returned it, lifting her chin and raising her voice to its usual tone. "All right."

With a tight smile tossed Theon’s way, Yara crossed his chamber back to the door and left him. She would see him again within a few hours – and discover how advantageous his agreement had been to her. She trusted her brother’s honesty, and trusted that his support of Daenerys had been in earnest, but all the same, it was not Theon’s decision Yara had to hope to influence. Amongst a council headed by Starks and loyalists, it was not Theon's opinion that might cast the final judgement. It was Sansa’s.

*

The dais at the head of the throne room was conspicuously empty. Though the iron throne, Yara thought, for all its infamy was not irreplaceable, the steps of its platform were not built for a crippled king. Instead of a new throne atop the dais there stood only tall candelabras, and when Bran Stark took to the hall to receive his subjects with their pleas and requests, he would be on a level with his people. _ Poetic _, Yara thought drily.

The throne room was not set up for a courtly trial as Yara had anticipated, but rather housed only a broad table, around which chairs were set for the council of rulers, and for Yara and Daenerys. Yara was seated beside her, though several feet from the queen to account for the length of the great table. She spread her legs comfortably and rested a forearm on the table in front of herself. Obnoxious confidence, she thought, was preferable to meekness.

Yara recognised many of the others around the table, though not all; representatives had been sent in lieu of the Prince of Dorne and Lord Arryn of the Vale, and crownlands officials numbered among their ranks alongside those Yara did know. All, regardless of their familiarity, trained their eyes on either Daenerys or herself. Daenerys clasped her hands atop the table and stared at some fixed point beyond Sansa Stark, seated opposite. Yara directed her own gaze at the guards of various factions lining the walls of the throne room, silent and orderly like sullen tapestries.

Finally, as it seemed no one else was willing to break the heavy silence, Yara spoke. "This is an unusual trial." She turned her eyes on Tyrion Lannister, the likeliest candidate for a swift response.

"This is a meeting, not a trial," the dwarf replied smoothly. He met Yara's eye, his expression composed and self-assured. "We know she is guilty."

_ The little cunt. _Daenerys had been right, Yara thought – the Hand of the King was an insect of a man. Yara remembered the worry and discomfort on his face upon first greeting them in the Red Keep. Tyrion was aware of his own treachery, of the way he did not deserve his prestigious post, but had slithered into it dishonestly with some knowledge of books and a few calculated speeches. Yara was certain of his self-awareness, but whatever guilt the dwarf might have felt was absent now. In a tall chair, surrounded by sworn guards, with all the power his bitter little heart could ever have yearned for, Tyrion was smug as any tyrant character he might impose on Daenerys.

Yara opened her mouth to cut him down, but Bran Stark spoke first. He addressed Tyrion. "The agenda." Bran still looked young, a boy making the final, awkward transition to manhood, but his voice was flat and empty, and his stare was like that of an ancient blind man's, seeing everything and seeing nothing. Yara did not look at him for very long.

Tyrion cleared his throat and leaned forward, interlocking his fingers and resting his clasped hands upon the table in an ugly imitation of Daenerys. Yara looked to the queen beside her. Daenerys was silent as the dwarf spoke. "We will recount the crimes of Daenerys Targaryen–" Daenerys's knuckles whitened. "–and Yara Greyjoy, if you would, you will explain to the council how it is Daenerys comes to sit here, alive and well. Did Jon Snow acquire a mummer's trick dagger, my lady?" The man who had met Yara's party at the Mud Gate, Ser Bronn, gave a snort. Tyrion looked pleased, and Yara's anger grew hot.

"_Your Grace,_" Yara growled. Beside her, Daenerys gave the smallest shake of her head. Yara glanced at her, and reluctantly conceded – it was not the time to antagonise the council. She turned her blazing eyes back on the dwarf. "And then?" she asked, her voice low. "I don't suppose you have summoned us here for a bedtime story."

Tyrion seemed unfazed. "And then, _ Your Grace_," he said, "Daenerys may offer a defence of herself and her actions, and the council will debate what action may be taken on the matter."

_ What action may be taken on the matter. _The Imp, at the very least, wished Daenerys dead all over again. Perhaps he had taken offence at his brother's death. Perhaps he had, after all, taken offence at his rotten sister's death, too. Yara's eyes roamed the others seated at the great table, scanning their faces for some indication of their own opinions. Some, like Theon, and the new Grand Maester Samwell Tarly, wore expressions of apprehension and unease. Others, like Ser Bronn, and Dorne's representative, looked simply bored. 

Yara turned her gaze on Sansa Stark. The Queen in the North sat with a straight spine, her red hair swept back in a sensible braid, watching Daenerys calmly. Yara could not read Sansa's thoughts from her pretty, dignified face, but she trusted that Theon would keep his word and advise his queen in Yara's favour. She hoped that Sansa would listen.

Yara hardly listened as Tyrion began the account of the burning of King's Landing – nor did she pay much attention when King Bran's lifeless tone took over, relating the event in his dull, matter-of-fact manner. She focused instead on Daenerys's presence beside her, tense and silent and paler by the second, and on the heat in her own belly, her simmering anger with the council's proceedings, with the coldness and inertia and _ bureaucracy _of it all. This table of monsters and cravens and Starks held Daenerys's life in the palms of their weak little hands, and if, after hours and hours of this languid, impassive discussion, they elected to murder her once more, they would do so unbothered by Yara's seething passion. She felt every lick of burning fury against her insides, and beside it, ice-cold tendrils of helpless fear.

Time passed. Yara half-listened as accounts of the incident grew personal, anecdotal, transparently persuasive in tone. King Bran himself was objective and detached – having been witness, Yara supposed, from some place of great distance. Tyrion's lethal design was apparent in his overuse of words like 'unjust'. Ser Davos Seaworth, Bran Stark's Master of Ships, was impassioned in his references to smallfolk terror. Some several guardsmen stepped forward to deliver their own narrations. The others, Sansa included, were silent.

Yara grew tired of the commiserating. _ Yes_, she thought, tapping her fingertips against the table, _ countless are dead. Yes, they are dead because of Daenerys. Yes, it is undeserved. But it is done. _

She lifted her chin and raised her voice, halting another guardsman-witness in his approach of the table. He might have been the fifth or the fifty-seventh of them to narrate the burning. Yara did not care. "We have heard enough," she said. She met the eyes of each seated official in turn, daring them to speak against her. "We know what happened. Aye, perhaps an execution befits that crime." Yara glanced at Daenerys. Unexpectedly, Daenerys met her gaze. Her eyes were large and unreadable; her mouth closed, set in a full-lipped line. Her hair, in soft silver waves about her face, moved in some throne room draught. Yara wondered briefly if her use of 'crime' had hurt her – or if her use of 'execution' had reminded Daenerys of a probable fate.

Yara turned her eyes back to the council, and raised her voice a little further. "There _ was _ an execution! Do you think Daenerys must pay for King's Landing? I say she _ has _paid. Jon Snow put a dagger in his queen's heart – you have had your execution."

"She appears to have survived that execution," Tyrion responded coolly. Yara fixed her glare on the dwarf.

Perhaps the bite in his tone displeased Sansa Stark, too, for it was she who next spoke. "The debate has not started, my lord." Her voice was soft and calm, and something like a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. Yara turned her eyes on Sansa, searching her for meaning. She had shut down the Imp in some way, Yara thought, but was that endorsement of Daenerys? Sansa had seemed only to sit and listen in quiet composure, to keep her thoughts hidden as the council spoke, and Yara could not anticipate which side the Northern queen would take.

Sansa met Yara's gaze. Yara did not look away, but set her jaw, and waited for Sansa's address. "Your Grace," Sansa said, "would you tell us what has happened since the execution?" Yara fought the urge to narrow her eyes. Sansa remained unplaceable. That she agreed it was in fact an execution was promising, but still the Stark queen's thoughts were concealed.

Yara was reluctant, hyperconscious of the ways her words may be twisted against her cause, but she spoke. She recounted the rumours of Drogon's flight to Volantis, and Daenerys's resurrection; her own voyage to the Free City and visit to the Temple of the Lord of Light, the red priestess Kinvara's domain; her return to Pyke with Daenerys, and the secrecy they had committed to. She spoke of Daenerys's aid in the Iron Islands' reform, how she had delayed her own military regroup to help Yara's cause, and of her generosity. She wondered vaguely, as she spoke, if her praise of the queen was heavy-handed – if it came off as glib as the Imp's criticism, a calculated manoeuvre to sway her audience into support. After little thought, she decided she did not care a damn. _ I am no liar, and Daenerys will live or die knowing I am with her. _

Theon watched Yara as she spoke. His eyes glinted with some sort of recognition. _ Satisfaction, perhaps, _ Yara thought, _ that an ally in our independence filled his place_. In truth, Daenerys may have been more help to Yara than even her brother would have. She was not bowed by dissent, she strayed none from her path under pressure. Daenerys as Yara knew her was not the queen who had burned a city after surrender. Daenerys set her mind on a righteous goal, on virtue and freedom, and she did not bend.

When Yara paused, Ser Davos was first to speak. He cleared his throat and addressed not Yara, but Daenerys. "Am I to understand," he said, "that you did not seek out your armies? Your – horse-lords and eunuchs?"

Yara looked at Daenerys. She was pale still, but her face had not changed. Her voice reflected its tense calm. "You are, ser."

"That is, you remained on Pyke?"

"I did."

Davos knitted his brows together and looked aside, at King Bran and his Hand. Tyrion gave a short exhalation through his nose and spoke. "Do you have a defence?" he asked Daenerys.

Yara kept her eyes on the queen. She'd had days and weeks to prepare, Yara thought, to compose some regal declaration to secure the council's sympathy and respect. The burning was past, done, left to the pages of history, and ought to bear no significance on the queen's current ambitions. Daenerys had armies to retrieve and allies to placate, and eloquence was one of her strengths. Finally, Daenerys spoke.

"No, my lord. I do not."

There was a silence, and Yara dazedly watched Daenerys's chest rise and fall with deep, slow breaths. Daenerys was calm; the council was stunned and uncomfortable. There were a thousand defences she might have offered – _ grief, an accident, pure intentions. _She had given none. Yara wondered vaguely if she even intended to survive.

She had not spoken to Daenerys about King's Landing, she supposed, in the long months she had lived on Pyke. It was the past, she had thought, and the queen had not initiated any discussion of the event. Whatever Daenerys had thought of it, she had maintained her plan to pursue her forces' eventual return. She had committed herself to Yara's independence cause. She had behaved, in truth, like someone with will, with purpose, and with self-certainty. Would she bow now under this cowards' council?

Yara would not have it.

Bran Stark's council were beginning to exchange polite, bemused words about a start to their debate, but Yara ignored them. She rose from her seat and placed her palms on the table and spoke at almost a roar. "Fuck your debate!" 

She watched with gritted teeth as the other rulers of the table turned their attention, slowly, silently, to her. Yara dug her short nails into the varnished wood of the tabletop. "She offered no defence," she hissed, "but I will. You have had your bloody execution! The bastard put a blade in her heart! Is that enough? Your queen's – _ your queen's _– armies were sent across the sea! Is that enough? She lost everything! Is that enough?"

Yara met Theon's eyes. He inhaled slowly and raised his chin. Yara could not tell if it was agreement, but it was support nonetheless, and she continued with her eyes on the rest of the council, braced against her flat palms. "All this talk of justice," she said, lowering her voice, "when it has been served, and then some. Your queen lost her Unsullied, her Dothraki, her dragons, and her life. It is no less than a fucking miracle that she lives now. There is nothing more to do here."

Finally, Yara looked at Daenerys. The queen sat with her hands clasped as still on the table as they had been the hours the meeting had lasted. She gazed up at Yara, an indecipherable expression on her face. Yara addressed the table without breaking Daenerys's gaze.

"For months I have hosted her on Pyke. She has lived as part of the Iron Islands, under my watch and protection, and has left them none until now. In my letters, I called her my ally." She looked back up at the council and raised her voice once more. "I say now that she is my prisoner, _ my _prisoner, and I will decide what is to be done with her. And I say that she goes free."

The dwarf opened his mouth. Yara felt an abrupt, burning urge to cut his ugly throat, to silence him before he dripped any more poisonous words, but Bran Stark spoke before Tyrion's acid came.

"The council will adjourn," Bran said simply, watching Yara in that empty way of his, "for a few days' deliberation."

Perhaps the rest of the council wished to remain, to argue with Yara and to press their own murderous opinions, but Bran was king of almost all of them, and so they stood slowly from the table. With nods and mutters, one by one, they departed with Yara's hot stare on their backs. Bran Stark's Kingsguard commander, Ser Brienne, took the handles of his chair to make the king's leave.

Theon rose, but Sansa remained seated. She watched Daenerys for a moment, unmoving in unreadable silence across from her. Then Sansa stood too, and was gone.

*

Yara was thankful to return to the chambers in Maegor's Holdfast. The throne room was large, cold, hollow, and easy to feel misplaced in. Even in the absence of the iron throne, the hall was unmistakable, and it was not familiar nor comforting to Yara. But their chambers, that set of plain, solemn rooms, with hearths and wooden furnishings and not a house banner in sight, might have been located on the Iron Islands as easily as King's Landing, and Yara was relieved for their anonymity and their windows looking over the sea.

Yara exhaled heavily as the door shut behind herself and Daenerys. Her men, save the two left to stand guard outside, departed for their own accommodations. The sun, low in the west, shone no light into the easterly chambers – they were filled only with the flickering warmth of the central fire and a dozen candles, set out idyllically for the evening. Yara intended to do no more than drink as much southern wine as she was capable of, and to collapse dreamlessly into her foreign bed.

"Yara," Daenerys said quietly.

Yara halted in her approach of her bedchamber door and turned her head towards the queen, a hand moving to rest on her swordless belt.

Daenerys was silent for a moment before she spoke again. "I wish to thank you." She clasped her hands in front of herself and held her head high. Her voice was soft and subdued. Yara thought she seemed exhausted, but however beaten she may have felt after the day's ordeals, her dignity was intact. "For your words to the council," Daenerys continued, "and for all you have done besides that. Your loyalty has been far greater, and more enduring, than I could have expected from anyone."

Yara turned the corner of her mouth upwards half-heartedly. _ Loyalty_, she thought, was not the word to use. It was accurate enough, but 'loyalty' echoed 'duty', 'honour', 'obligation'. She had not spoken for Daenerys out of 'duty' to the queen – her knee was unbent – and she had not dragged any speech out of some chamber inside her labelled 'honour'. Yara wanted Daenerys to live, and, she thought, that would remain true if no courteous words existed at all to justify it.

Daenerys watched Yara expectantly. Yara did not voice those thoughts, but instead took a few steps towards the queen and responded lowly. "I'm always loyal to my prisoners," she said, widening her smile.

Daenerys closed the gap between them in an instant and pressed her lips to Yara's. Yara did not waste time before shutting her eyes and returning Dany's kiss, bringing her hands to touch the queen's waist as her lips parted to allow Yara a little deeper contact. Daenerys's hand rose and came to rest on Yara's neck, lightly, briefly, and then was dropped, and the queen stepped back.

"Your Grace," Daenerys whispered. She turned and moved to the door of her own bedchamber, slipping inside. Yara watched her go and lifted her hand to her mouth, touching the pad of her thumb against her lips in echo.


	10. DAENERYS V

The council was set to reconvene two days hence.

Confined almost entirely to her bedchamber in Maegor's Holdfast, there was little Dany had to keep her mind off of everything. She requested books, watched candles burn down to their wicks, lay in her fur-draped bed in some hazy place between sleep and wakefulness. She thought of Drogon, sailing above the Shadowlands beyond Asshai – she thought of Grey Worm, peaceful with the rest of her Unsullied amongst the flora and butterflies of Naath. Still, her mind drifted back to the great table in the Red Keep's throne room, to the gathering of rulers and advisors, to her life's value tossed about in cool words.

The core reason for the meeting, Dany avoided thinking about. The jagged and broken silhouette of King's Landing was hidden from her bedchamber windows, looking over the sea alone, and Dany was grateful for it. If she allowed her thoughts to turn to bells and dragonfire, bile was quick to rise in her throat. It was not the time for such recollection; Dany had a dignity and composure to maintain throughout her not-quite-trial, and that remembered – what, grief, anger, madness? – would not help her. She thought back only to Bran Stark's impassive stare, to Tyrion's smug certainty, to Sansa's quiet perception. To Yara.

Yara's defence of Dany had, in truth, stunned her. They had sailed to the capital with so few ships, so few men, and if the council was to make a severe decision despite Yara's words, then the ironborn queen had placed herself at risk, too. Perhaps her life was secure, but for half a year Dany had watched Yara live and breathe her Iron Islands' cause. Her dissent could not be beneficial for their prospective independence. But Dany was grateful.

_ I have proven my gratitude, _ she thought, almost wryly. If she parted her lips, she could feel the ghost of Yara's over them again, and she was torn between some inappropriate giddiness, and something like regret. Was she a small girl, enamoured with a heroic knight come to save her? Was now, amongst all her fear and fury and sickening _ guilt _, the time for childish acts of over-emotion and impulsivity?

_ But if I am to die, _ she supposed, _ I am glad to have done that first. _

Dany brushed her fingertips over the grey-brown furs of the bed and set her mind to think of nothing but the feeling of them, the catching of them in her fingernails, the softness and the coarse patches. She did not look up when the door opened – many servants had come and gone, bringing food and wine and her requested books. If it was a book, she would flip through its pages passingly and take in none of the words; if it was food or wine, she would ignore it entirely.

"_Your Grace._" 

The voice addressing her was not the soft, trepidatious voice of a chambermaid, but that of a man, gruff and sneering. Dany's eyes shot up to land on the two standing in her doorway – guardsmen, draped in the gold cloaks of the City Watch, sworn to the Iron Throne. She stood slowly from the bed, her shoulders tense, her fingers curling into the tough fabric of her dress.

"You have no right to be here," she said. She had meant for her words to sound strong, commanding, even imperious. They sounded weak, anxious – the order of a child who knew she had no authority.

"Nor do you," the taller of the guardsmen hissed. At his side, silver flashed behind his closed fist. Coin? Dagger? Dany had no means to defend herself.

She drew herself up and lifted her chin. Perhaps she ought to have expected such a thing. Jon Snow's murder had not cost him his life but, in the end, nor had it cost Daenerys hers. Vigilante justice was both unpunished and unfinished. Dany did not know whether these two guardsmen – tall and short, slight and thickly-muscled, but both gleaming in their gold cloaks and evil intent – worked alone or at some figurehead's behest, but she supposed they felt confident and justified in either case, and there was little she could do but to project the same self-certainty and righteousness, and to pray. 

“I suppose you have come to kill me,” she said, forcing her tone into cool composure.

The shorter guardsman responded. "Right you are." He held no blade as his comrade did, but curled his gauntlets into loose fists. _ An ugly death. _

Dany clasped her hands tightly in front of herself, inhaling slowly, and then raising her voice. "Then perhaps you should get on with it," she said. The bedchamber door remained open, but she did not know how well her voice would carry in the Red Keep – did not know, indeed, if any of Yara's men remained alive in the vicinity to hear her. The Greyjoy guards had been posted alongside the Red Keep guards for their protection. How else could the two gold cloaks have gotten in, if not by murdering their fellows?

"In a hurry to be somewhere, are you?" the taller guardsman sneered.

Dany blew air from her nose in a quick, cold, half-amused response. She turned her head, as though the two men were no more than impolite guests, and gazed at a group of her expired candles. "I thought executioners to be rather more efficient," she said, and brought her eyes back to her antagonists.

The taller one took a stride towards Dany.

And froze, as a dull shortsword pierced his side. The guardsmen wore only boiled leather between their golden plate armour; the blade impaled him in full, its point jutting red from beneath his ribcage. It slid backwards and exited the man. He dropped slowly, silently to the floor, coating its stone in dark carmine, and Yara, framed in the doorway, watched him fall.

The shorter guardsman spun, stepping over his dying crony and raising his steel-sheathed fist. Dany moved backwards to something like safety behind the bed and inhaled as the guardsman knocked Yara's sword from her hand, and drew a dirk from his belt. He lunged, and Yara slipped by him, and the heavy man turned, but too slow; Yara came behind him and swiped his feet from under him with a hooked ankle. He landed hard on his golden-armoured front in the other man's blood, dirk gripped tight against the stone floor. Yara stood hard on his wrist, bent, and wrenched the blade from his grasp. He turned his head – stupidly. Yara drove the dirk into the softest part of his throat, and Dany released the breath she had been holding as the man choked and sputtered on his blood.

Yara straightened and stepped over the men's bodies, crossing the bedchamber to Dany. Her brow was creased; her mouth set in a hard line. She spoke shortly. "Your Grace," she said, reaching to grasp Dany's hand and pull her from the chambers, past the dead guardsmen to the outer corridor. Dany allowed herself to be tugged along. She fixed her eyes on the sliver of Yara's face visible to her from behind; Yara kept herself close in front of Dany, shielding her, and kept her eyes too busy with surveillance of their surroundings to look back.

Dany’s prediction had been accurate – the two of Yara’s men, stationed outside the great door to their chambers, lay sprawled and bloody across the cold floor. Yara released Dany's hand and, tight-lipped, surveyed their gored corpses passingly. Dany’s gaze lingered a little longer. 

The black-haired ironborn, with a slashed throat and arm bent at an awful angle, she did not know. The other, younger and fairer, she did; Harren, a lad with mettle and wit far exceeding his low birth. He had escorted the two queens to Lordsport on the evening of the raper Lorren’s execution, Dany remembered – had called bawdy jokes across their party, had held a constant smile. His cheeks were not now bright and windburnt, but a sick grey. The colour of rubbled stone; the colour of ash-choked waves. 

Dany pressed her lips together and kept her eyes on Harren’s body and half-listened to Yara shouting for her men. _ This is all King’s Landing holds for me. Death, and fire, and blood, and death. _ She did not look up as Darrik Pyke appeared in her periphery; did not look up as he was sent off again, to fetch some official of the crown to deal with the mess. _ Death, and fire, and blood, and death. _

“Are you hurt?”

Dany tore her eyes from the corpse to meet Yara’s gaze. Yara’s brows were knitted together, every facial muscle tight in restraining her fury. Dany felt her own frame soften, her shoulders releasing their tension as she sank into herself.

“No,” she replied quietly. Yara’s cheek was spattered in red. Dany wanted to take the queen’s face in her hands, to brush the blood off with her thumb and kiss the places it had stained. 

Instead, she spoke again. “Thank you.”

Yara nodded once, but said nothing. Dany watched her eyes move back to her men’s lifeless bodies, to the open chamber door, to the length of oppressively silent corridor.

Yara was strong, blood-smeared, breathing hard in her exertion and slowly dissipating adrenaline. Dany was frustrated to find herself feeling small and shaken beside her. She was not unused to relying on others for protection – she had had her queensguard, once, and before that, Ser Jorah. She owed her life many times over to the dead knight. But it did not feel like this. Yara’s defence of her felt not like a singular event, like a stroke of luck or a lone favour to be thankful for, but like another peak of a long-running sequence, like another wave on an immortal shore. It felt not dutiful or expected, but generous and confusing. It was unquestionably _ different _ to her queensguard.

Dany was different, too – in a thousand ways and one. She remembered her queendom before Yara as if it were a fairytale, words written on a page, imagined through a mist of idealism and faint disbelief. The queen she had been, though she may have looked like Dany, spoken like Dany, fought and hoped and opined like Dany, did not fit the space Daenerys Targeryen cut for herself in the present. _ I am no longer that queen_, Dany thought, only a little surprised. _ I am no longer a queen at all. _

How could she be, without any armies to speak of, without dragons, and held and debated in the Red Keep as though a common traitor? When she dressed herself, and rode to Lordsport alone; when she laughed and swore at long tables, and sat far from any dais; when her clothes suited Pyke, and not Astapor or Meereen? If Dany thought to burn her antagonising council, she had no means to do so. If she thought to sail far from the conflict, her ships were not her own. 

She was not a queen – she was a highborn woman brought very, very low, who ought not to be surprised by an assassination attempt, and who ought not to be surprised that Yara Greyjoy’s protection of her was entirely undeserved.

Dany did not know how long she had stood in thought, her gaze fixed on Yara, but Darrik Pyke had returned. He strode towards them grimly, flanked by cloaks – a gold, whom Dany did not know, and a white, whom she did. 

Ser Brienne inhaled at the sight of the dead. She gripped her swordbelt and turned her head to Yara. "Your Grace," she said. "What happened?"

"Assassins." Yara's tone was curt. _ Too angry, perhaps_, Dany thought, and fought the sudden and inappropriate urge to smile, _ for pleasantries_. Brienne continued to watch Yara, waiting for some elaboration, but none was forthcoming. Dany exhaled slowly through pursed lips and took a small step forward.

"Two men of the City Watch," Dany said. She kept her voice clear and calm, and fixed her eyes on Brienne, but she could feel Yara's hot stare on her from aside. "They murdered Yara's guards, and made an attempt on my life." She clasped her hands loosely in front of herself and raised her chin. Perhaps she felt small and shaken, but she did not have to display it. "They are dead."

Brienne craned her neck to look past Yara and Daenerys into the chambers. The gold cloaks' bodies were readily visible, lying bent and broken and bloody in the centre. Brienne creased her brow and pressed her lips together and glanced once at Yara before she returned her gaze to Dany.

"Did they work alone?" she asked lowly. "Did they answer to another?"

Dany tensed her jaw. It was easy to accept that some would see her dead – that some would be apprehensive of King Bran's council, would not trust them to deliver the punishment they wanted for certain, would take it upon themselves to mimic Jon Snow instead. It was easy to accept that these people, individuals, disorganised lone wolves, would make their attempts. It was a more overwhelming thought that they could have a master, that their attempts could be calculated and multifaceted, that Yara – Dany's saviour though she was – may not have ended their campaign with her killing of the two gold cloaks.

"I do not know," Dany murmured.

Yara had gathered herself enough to speak again, though her voice remained short and harsh. "That is for the crown to find out. You may thank me for having stopped them, but this is your kingdom, and your crime to deal with."

Brienne turned her large, blue eyes on Yara and sighed. She tightened her grasp on her swordbelt as she spoke. "This should not have happened."

"Aye," Yara snapped. "But it did."

Dany watched the two women exchange a look. Ser Brienne was unhappy about the events, Dany thought, understandably so – as Lord Commander of Bran Stark's kingsguard, perhaps it was upsetting to have been undermined by the assassins, and to have missed them. Yet, whatever thoughts Brienne may have had about duty and honour and law, Dany did not see judgement of Yara in her face, but between them some sort of mutual understanding and sympathy. Finally, Brienne gave a nod.

"It will be handled," the knight said. "Thank you, Your Grace, for your action."

She turned to Dany. Dany met her eye and lifted her head. Brienne paused, then dipped her head. "Your Grace."

*

Ser Brienne was efficient. The four bodies were removed from the chambers, and the bloodied floors washed, within half an hour – the ironborn to be returned to Yara's ships, and given their appropriate send-off on the open sea, and the gold cloaks to be dealt with by the crown. Dany returned to her bedchamber, as spotless as it had been prior to the assassins' attempt, and flung herself back onto the bed to resume her quiet wallowing in guilt and heightened anxiety. She glanced often at the door, and her shoulders carried a new tension, but the event was over. New guardsmen were posted outside of the chambers, and her thoughts soon returned to the council.

It was dark outside of Dany's sea-facing window when Yara rapped her knuckles shortly against the door and shouldered it open. She bore a flagon of wine and two bronze cups. Dany straightened and watched as Yara set the cups down on the small oak table by the bed, poured the wine, and thrust one cup into Dany's hands.

Yara collapsed onto the foot of the bed beside Dany, drew a leg up to her chest, and drank deeply. Dany watched in faint amusement. "Do you have something to say?" she asked finally, lifting her cup to her lips.

"Aye," Yara answered. She turned to face Dany fully, her brow slightly creased. She paused before she went on. "I should have been there sooner. The bastards should not have made it to your chamber at all."

Dany looked Yara over. Her tone was serious, that was true, but she was not clad in her usual armour, and her dark tunic was half-unlaced. Perhaps Yara had drank a little wine before she came, to prepare for a macabre discussion, but despite the context, Dany did not feel a sombre atmosphere. She felt, instead, the way she felt idly discussing weather and smallfolk gossip in Yara's solar – secure, comfortable. At home.

Yara was waiting for her response. Dany drank, and then placed her cup aside on the little table by the flagon. "You came soon enough," she said, her voice soft. Her thanks, she hoped, were conveyed without words. Her thanking of Yara was becoming near-constant.

"I don't intend to see you dead."

Dany curved the corners of her mouth upwards. "I know you don't."

Yara leaned forward and set her half-drained cup on the floor, then turned, took Dany's face in both of her hands, and kissed her. Whatever thoughts Dany may have had before – of impulsivity, of immaturity, of poor timing – dissipated as she lifted her hands to grasp Yara's tunic and pull her closer. _ There could be no poor timing for this_, Dany thought as their lips touched, parted, and touched again, as Yara's teeth grazed her skin and their tongues met. Yara moved her mouth to kiss Dany's cheek, and one hand dropped to her breast. Amidst all the distress and danger King's Landing held for her, Dany thought hazily, she could have this – she could have Yara, with her support and her defence and her intimacy, and Yara could have her.

"Daenerys," Yara murmured against Dany's jaw, "would you–"

"Yes," Dany breathed. She leant against Yara and kissed her throat, held her waist as Yara unlaced the back of her dress, then shrugged it off easily. She stood and let it fall to the floor as Yara discarded her own clothes, and then laughed as Yara took her by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the bed. Yara's legs fit seamlessly between Dany's as she leant over her and pressed their lips together once more, holding herself up with one hand on the pillow by Dany's head, and the other slipping down between Dany's legs.

"Yara," Daenerys whispered, a little breathlessly, against her lips. Yara pulled her head back to meet her eyes, but kept her hand and her fingers moving slowly. A hand that gripped swords and battleaxes; a hand that Dany had held a hundred times, dismounting ships and horses. A calloused hand that felt softer than any before it against Dany's skin.

"I do not intend to see you dead, either," Dany finished. She bit her lower lip and smiled. Yara was beautiful unclothed – not the clean, feminine beauty of a noble maiden, but scarred, intelligent, muscled between her curves. Her hips were soft, and then her arms were lean; her grasp strong, and her closer touches gentle.

Yara laughed lowly, lowered her head, and then moved abruptly backwards. She took hold lightly of Dany's thighs and then dipped her head between them. Dany's hand found a place in Yara's hair, gripping it gently as she closed her eyes and parted her lips.

Finally, she forgot – forgot that they were in King's Landing, that they were queens, that her life hung in the balance. She felt, and forgot that they were anything at all but two women, who might have loved each other.


	11. YARA VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my wee hiatus is over! uni work never stops, but i am making the completion of this fic a priority, so expect more regular updates from now on (and hold me to it)!

The sunlight streaming through the easterly window was bright and blue-tinged, the cool tone suggesting much of the morning was already past. Yara raised herself onto her elbow and squinted at the room, its rich but sparse furnishings, near identical to her own within the Red Keep quarters, before she turned her gaze down on the sleeping woman beside her.

Daenerys's face was lax, her lips parted slightly and shining. The lines that creased her face daily, marks of stress and determination both, were reduced to the faintest shadows. For all of her strength and composure, an aura of anxiety had clouded Daenerys during the months she had spent on Pyke and the days in King's Landing – a dark sense of defeat, a sense that, in all her liveliness and fire, in truth she was only passing time before judgement greeted her. Now, in soft sleep, the gloom had dissipated. Daenerys looked soft, looked beautiful, looked innocent.

Yara recalled the previous night, the gift of Daenerys to herself, and curved the corner of her mouth upwards. She ran it through in her mind as she rose from the bed, lingering over details as she pulled on her tunic and breeches, lacing her boots to remembered sighs. Yara was not averse to admitting she was vain – she decided firmly that Daenerys's newfound relaxation was to her credit. Hers, and her skilled fingers and tongue.

When dressed in full, Yara left Daenerys to her sleep and moved into the living space of the quarters, settling into a chair with a sigh, planting her feet far apart on the stone floor. Yara let her head fall back against the top of the chair, paying no mind to the wood digging into the nape of her neck, and fixed her gaze on the plain grey ceiling above. 

Another day until the council met. Yara felt the weight of the anticipation like a stone in her belly. Daenerys might die. Daenerys might live, and be condemned to such a harsh punishment that she may as well die. 

Yara inhaled through her nose and tapped her fingertips stutteringly on the arm of her chair. There was no more she could do for Daenerys's cause, she knew. _ I did all I could at our first gathering. I made every point, said every word I had to say in her defence. _ Of all the determination one could convey in persuasion, it was not possible for Yara to convey any more. Her arguments were saturated with the passion she felt, and no more could be expressed. _ What, then, am I to do with the _ rest _ of it? _

The low groan of the opening door interrupted her thoughts. Yara lifted her head to greet Theon, entering the chambers with his back straight and chin lifted, but still having something of an uncertain, lost child in his restless eyes. Yara had told herself time and again that he would return to himself in a matter of weeks, that he would find his boyish arrogance and recover his old swagger, but it was yet to happen. It did not matter, she supposed, so long as he remained standing.

“I hope you’ve already broken your fast,” Yara said. “There's nothing but yesterday’s wine here.”

"Aye," Theon answered. He invited himself further into the room and lowered himself into the seat opposite Yara's. She raised her eyebrows. Perhaps the swagger was closer than she had thought. Perhaps there was a woman to credit for that, too.

Her brother had not come for no reason, and polite, courtly chatter was alien to ironborn. Yara waited, expectantly, and Theon launched into the subject of his visit without further delay.

"Daenerys,” he said. “The – attempt on her life. The council is angry. Embarrassed by it. Sansa thinks – _ I _think – she has a better chance, now.”

Yara studied him a moment, her mouth set, before she responded. “Why?”

Theon gave a shrug, looking uncertain. He didn’t think highly enough of himself, Yara thought. He was observant. Enough to judge the mood of a council of rulers, enough to judge that Yara cared enough about Daenerys to be grateful for his information. Not enough to guess the activities of the night before. Yara involuntarily curved her mouth into a smile, then leant forward and rested her forearms on her thighs as she lifted her chin at her brother.

“They don’t want to associate with criminals? They feel pity? What is it?”

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Theon responded impatiently, “just that it is.”

Yara snorted in frustration and sat back in her chair, casting her gaze across the chambers. What good was the intelligence if she had no notion of the motive? She might have taken advantage of it, found a weakness in resolve to exploit, but all she had now was a little hope that could well be false.

“My lord,” Daenerys’s low voice interrupted. Yara twisted in her seat to see Daenerys framed in her bedchamber doorway, head inclined in greeting of Theon. She had dressed in the clothes of the day before, presentable for company, but her silver hair was tousled about her face, and her eyes half-lidded, not long woken. Daenerys met Yara’s eye, and gave a small smile. 

“Yara,” she said, as she moved into the room proper to join them.

Theon rose from his seat. “Your Grace.” He glanced at Yara as Daenerys took the seat nearest her. No, he did not guess. He knew his sister, certainly, and might have known in an instant on any other occasion – but not here. Not here, in King's Landing. Not now, amidst the solemn council talks and unrest. Not with Daenerys Targaryen.

Yara lifted her eyebrows at Theon, amused, before she turned to address Daenerys with Theon's information, her voice lowered. “You might thank your attackers,” she said. “The council is swaying.”

Daenerys creased her brow, her eyes locked on Yara’s. She said nothing, but looked to Theon after a moment. He shifted on his feet and tightened his jaw, nodding once.

“Thank you for coming,” Daenerys said softly. Theon nodded again and cleared his throat, but Yara thought she saw some warmth in his gaze. He did more than trust Yara's judgement – he liked Daenerys, too, and judged her character for himself fairly. Yara knew that Theon was no stranger to guilt. Perhaps he saw that in the dragon queen, too, and liked her all the more for it.

“I’ll leave you,” Theon said finally. He looked at the two women in turn. “Yara. Your Grace.”

As her brother turned on his heel and left the chambers, Yara extended her hand over the arm of her chair to take firm hold of Daenerys’s.

*

The council reconvened with punctuality the following day. Yara sat in the same seat as before, tense beside a pale Daenerys, back straight and hands clasped tightly upon the great table, knuckles white and threatening to burst through her skin. She watched the rulers of Westeros file into the throne room. She watched them take their seats and assume neutral expressions. She watched their guards station themselves along the walls of the hall. She listened to the dwarf's introductory speech, that bureaucratic performance of his, and half-heartedly hoped her stiff silence passed for courtesy.

She studied Tyrion, too, as she watched his posturing. Arrogant as always, that noble, smug, very _ Lannister _twang in his voice, making calculated little gestures to keep his captive audience engaged. Still, beyond that self-assured facade, Yara saw the little cracks in his composure – a glance here and there at Daenerys, a line between his heavy brows that refused to fade.

_ What might have made the Imp so nervous? _ Yara wondered, unclasping her hands and tapping her short nails against the wooden table. _ Perhaps he is unsure of the path the day will take. Perhaps a recent plot of his has been foiled – perhaps a power grab, or an assassination. _

It was speculation on her part, Yara knew. Idle and unfounded, born more out of a general disdain for Bran Stark's Hand than any true evidence. Still, watching the beady, darting movements of Tyrion's eyes as he droned, she would not have been shocked to be proven correct.

Yara paid the other rulers and notables the same silent, vaguely hostile regard as they spoke their pieces in turn. Some were fair, if stern – Ser Davos Seaworth advocated a maiming followed by a pardon, while Dorne's representatives suggested an Essosi exile, as the dragon queen had suffered in her childhood. Some were unforgiving, out of boredom more than morality, Yara thought – Ser Bronn, or Lord Bronn, or whichever the man was, proposed a quick execution, better to get the damned matter over and done with. Through it all, Yara did not once look at Daenerys seated at her side. Better to project confidence. Better to allow Daenerys the slightest respite from the constant scrutiny.

Eventually, inevitably, the table fell silent, and dozens of eyes fell on the Queen in the North. Yara inhaled slowly through her nose and straightened her spine, laying her palms flat on the table. Perhaps the Imp imagined that he held the most power in that hall, being the Hand and spokesman for King Bran. Perhaps there were other men, seated around the table of nobility, who lulled themselves to sleep at night with promises that they were the cleverest players, they had their fingers in a thousand pies, their ascent to power was assured. But not one of them was a fool, and nor was Yara too proud to acknowledge that Sansa Stark's voice spoke louder than them all. Every court Sansa had held, every damning she had escaped, every enemy she had outlasted in her young life – all were combined, now, in the magnitude of her presence in Bran's council.

Sansa's statement was soft and simple. "I say that Daenerys Targaryen goes free."

Yara released the breath she had been holding, and fought against the smile begging to break across her face. She held her hopes in iron bonds – but, one by one, as she might have guessed, the others at the table broke into mutters, drummed their fingers, sighed, and agreed. Sansa Stark held influence, held respect, and held siblingship with the king in the Red Keep. Her decision, in the end, was Westeros's decision – however unspoken that might have been, however young and feminine the queen might have been, dissent was not advisable. Yara observed it, and thanked every god she could name for it. 

Tyrion Lannister clenched his jaw, glanced around the table, glanced to Bran Stark, and then spoke at a mutter. "Daenerys Targaryen goes free," he said. King Bran nodded once, and the matter was decided.

Daenerys sank lower into her seat beside Yara, and Yara vividly pictured herself turning aside, grasping the queen's face in her hands, and kissing her hard before all the power in Westeros. She ran her fantasy through five times, if only to stop herself fulfilling it. _ It is done_, Yara told herself, dazedly, and then delightedly, and then confidently, and then matter-of-factly. _ It is done, and we have won. _It had only taken half a year of secrecy, and one speech, and two dead assassins. Now, Yara remembered their spilt blood as though it was Dornish wine. Sweet, and she could have done with a drop more.

The rulers were rising from the table and filing from the hall with their respective guards. Yara stood, scraping her chair back along the stone floor carelessly, and moved to her men stationed at the wall. Daenerys remained seated, her face pale and unreadable, lost in thought.

"Take the queen to the chambers," Yara instructed Darrik Pyke, and then she was off again, striding after the Northern guard as they moved towards the great doors.

She caught up with them easily, shouldering a great brute of a Northman aside to penetrate the inner circle. She gave Theon a flash of a cocky grin as he turned to stare at her, then smoothed her expression into solemnity as she addressed the group in general.

"A word with the queen," Yara said.

Sansa turned in a curtain of red hair and grey cloak, her gaze landing on Yara and remaining fixed for a moment before she addressed her guard. "Leave us," she said, as kind as those words could be made to sound.

Yara finished the command for her. "You as well," she told her brother. Theon narrowed his eyes at her before he turned and obeyed.

Yara and Sansa stood alone, out of the way in an empty corner of the throne room. Sansa stood several inches above Yara, but she was slender, and the skirt of her dress brushed the floor heavily. It might have held the air of a confrontation, but Yara was hard pressed to feel intimidated by any heavyset, brutish, ironborn warrior – she could not feel threatened by a physically helpless girl such as Sansa, the Queen in the North though she might be. Yara addressed her with manners, but as an equal.

"Your Grace," Yara began. "I wanted to thank you." She pressed her lips together and fixed her eyes on Sansa. They were not friends, the two queens, but if Sansa’s vote in Daenerys’s favour had proved anything, it was that they did not have to be enemies.

"Your Grace," Sansa responded smoothly. Yara veiled her slight surprise – she knew well enough herself that she was a queen in her own right, but it had not yet become clear to her whether she was extended that regard by the other kingdoms. She was not inclined to expect a great deal from greenlanders. 

"You don't have to thank me,” Sansa went on. “I would not have made the choice that I made if I did not think it was best." 

Yara waited for an explanation. Sansa hesitated, looking down as her hands smoothed the folds of her skirt, then clasped in front. She raised her head again and met Yara’s eyes. "I will not claim to understand her," she said slowly, drawing her thin brows together. Yara imagined she could hear the unspoken continuation of Sansa’s statement – the condemnation. _ I will not claim to understand how she could do a thing like that. Burn a city, slaughter thousands. _Yara said nothing. She had won Daenerys’s freedom – she was not fool enough to expect the gift of forgiveness along with it.

Sansa continued. "But I know grief." A pause. Yara knew well enough that was true. Whatever opinion she held of House Stark, they had been decimated in Sansa’s life. "I know anger. And I know punishment. You were right, when you said that she has been punished enough."

Yara nodded slowly. "She has."

"If Pyke is her home now, and you are her keeper, I will not object to her freedom." The ghost of a smile played at Sansa's lips. "Theon trusts you, and so do I."

"Theon," Yara said. She paused, tensed her jaw, and then lifted her chin. "In Winterfell – how is he?" It was a long moment before the Northern Queen replied.

"Happy," Sansa said.


	12. DAENERYS VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last update of this decade...

It was done.

Dany was to set sail with Yara that evening, the very next day after the final council meeting, and return to Pyke. It was surreal, and Dany thought she ought to react in all manner of ways – incessant smiling, perhaps, or sobbing in relief. Instead, she felt a dull, hollow ache in the centre of her chest, the pain of an unexpected turn of events which, although far better than the anticipated outcome, Dany had no reaction prepared for. She had not thought to plan for this sort of full pardon, and whatever relief and gratitude she felt for the sparing of her life was masked by the single, heavy, burning question: _ what now? _

It was done, and Dany did not just mean her unconventional trial. It was entirely impossible to ignore any longer that everything she had dreamt of in her Essosi queendom, all she had sailed to Westeros for in the first place – conquest, leadership, her rightful reign – it was done. If she had been inhibited earlier on Pyke by powerlessness, by the loss of her forces and by her dependence on Yara, she was now only inhibited further by her complete and total confusion.

If she made once again to conquer her promised Seven Kingdoms, would it not end the same as before – in fire, and blood, and death? Had she not learned, through all the clouds of dust and rubble, through Jon Snow's dagger in her heart, through the traumatic awakening in the Volantene Temple, that fire, and blood, and death, were _ unpleasant_?

And if it did not end the same – if, by some miracle, Daenerys Targaryen succeeded in claiming Westeros on her second attempt, what did she mean to _ do _with it? Would she steal away the North's long-awaited independence? Would she do the same with the Iron Islands', and betray Yara? Would she terrorise and subdue, even execute, those same rulers who had, not one full day earlier, against all odds, spared her own life?

And Sansa Stark, the woman whom Dany had first identified as _ antagonist _, on some kind of par with the late Cersei Lannister – what of her? Dany had held her half-responsible for her murder, as if she had remained days' journey away in the North but thrust Jon's dagger with him all the same. As if Sansa's mistrust, polite and quite justified though it had been, had been the foundation of Dany's downfall. As if Sansa, a quiet, reserved Northern queen, had been a more poisonous influence on Dany's conquest than either Jon, Cersei, or Varys the Spider. Yet, after all of that, Sansa had been the first to speak.

"Daenerys Targaryen goes free."

Whatever thoughts of conquest that Dany had continued to nurse, whatever fire and blood remained in her, she now watched disintegrate in her palms. The world had changed while she had not been looking, the wheel had turned quicker than she knew, and Dany no longer knew what it held for her, what place it fit her into, what to _ ask _it for. 

She did not know, and so she stood silent, weakly smiling, gripping her own wrist, as Yara met the Northern party in the courtyard of the Red Keep to make her goodbyes. Dany's gaze was unfocused, and she hardly noticed as Sansa approached her personally until the queen was stood mere feet in front of her.

"May I have a word?" Sansa asked, her words quiet. Dany met the queen's ice-blue eyes, inhaled softly through her nose, and nodded after only a moment's hesitation.

Sansa glanced aside, at the Greyjoy siblings deep in a low-voiced, private discussion of their own, and drew Dany a little further out of the way, half-obscured by a thick, ornate pillar of fresh stone. She turned her gaze back on Dany and seemed to tighten her jaw, bringing her hands back around to clasp behind herself against her thick woollen cloak before she spoke. "Jon remains beyond the Wall," Sansa said. "I would ask that, with your consent, a rider may be sent to find him, and inform him that you live."

Dany opened her mouth, and swiftly closed it again.

She had been very successful in reducing Jon Snow to no more than a villainous whisper in her mind. On Pyke, there was no risk of his presence – she was shielded by distinctive, honest ironborn, kind and chivalrous in their own abrasive ways, as she had learned – and Jon Snow was no more than the faceless enemy who had, long ago, stripped Dany of her triumph, her power, and her life. Jon was not her blood relative, her former lover. He was a shadow. The thought of him rising again above that, becoming once more a corporeal presence in her life, after _ all _of it, brought bile to the back of her throat.

But Sansa had asked – she had tasked no rider discreetly, had not taken Dany by surprise, but had sought her permission. Sansa's vote for her freedom, and now, Sansa's respect of her wishes – it did not match with what Dany had thought of her. It did not neatly fit her profile – it was not cold, was not calculating, was not self- and Stark-centred. Dany did not know what, now, to make of Queen Sansa Stark – did not know which of her perceptions were fair, and which faulty. It did not particularly concern her. In a few days, she had been proven wrong about a great many things, had a great many convictions challenged and unceremoniously destroyed. What, truly, was one woman's character to her? What, truly, did she have to lose if she was wrong again? Dany decided that she would trust Sansa's kindness, bewildering as it may have been, and thank the gods that it was a doubtful compassion rather than abject cruelty.

And, after all, Dany had a protector. By this point, after half a year of reliance on the ironborn queen, Dany could not be prevented from trusting her with her life. Who was Jon Snow to Yara Greyjoy?

Jon could know of her survival, and of her freedom, and it would not hurt Daenerys. Neither she, nor Yara, would allow it. Jon Snow had been lucky with his first dagger – it would be his last, and luck would no longer suffice for him.

Finally, Dany inhaled, drew herself up straight, and gave a nod. Sansa responded with a soft, almost imperceptible smile, and it was done.

*

The swaying of a ship on open water was becoming a comfort to Dany. The sea, though not a second home to Dany as it was to Yara, was a transitional space; whether travelling toward or away from incident, she was safe so long as she was sailing. Dany's appreciation for insular spaces had grown significantly in the past months – lone, gull-beset ships on broad seas, her warm Pyke bedchamber, and the dirty little salt-sprayed inns of Lordsport alike, all were preferable now to an expansive grass plain or open sky. Perhaps it was the physical safety, enclosed in four walls beneath a hardy stone ceiling, or perhaps the largeness of herself in a small room, power enough to satisfy without the grasp for a little more.

Whichever it was, it was here that she finally let her shoulders down – sitting with Yara Greyjoy in the captain's cabin, a dancing candle and outsize flagon of dark wine on the little table between them. Yara was clad in her typical kraken-emblazoned iron, like her men unafraid of being armoured upon the water. Dany had shed her single dress of King's Landing with relief, making a vague decision to burn it upon return to Pyke, and had assumed the comfortable warmth and modesty of a shapeless ironborn tunic and breeches once more.

Yara and Daenerys had sat in intermittent comfortable-uncomfortable silence for Dany did not know how long. Yara's eyes roved apprehensively over Dany's down-tilted face, then shifted to gaze out of the window upon the swelling green water, and then returned to her face. Dany watched the gentle shifting of the wine in her cup with the ship's movement.

Dany did not look up when she finally spoke, her voice low and soft. "Do you think me ungrateful?"

Yara furrowed her brow, slowing the tapping of her fingers on the table to a stuttering halt. Dany lifted her eyes to catch Yara's gaze, drawing her lower lip between her teeth briefly, before smoothing her face into solemn composure. Her words were to be dark enough – she need not exacerbate them with the tremulous expression of a child.

"I gave no thanks for the council's verdict," Dany said. "I have not smiled since it came." She broke from Yara's gaze and lowered her eyes once more to her cup, holding it loosely within both hands. The wine glinted flickering orange and deep crimson in the candlelight. Fire and blood.

"I am grateful," Dany murmured. "I am grateful that my life was spared, my freedom granted. But I am–" She paused, inhaled, and shut her eyes. "As much as the others at that table, I fail to see any justice in that verdict."

Yara's voice was uncharacteristically soft in reply. "Didn't you want to live?"

"Yes. I wanted to live. I hardly dared hope, but with all my heart, I wanted to live. But King's Landing…" Dany swallowed and lifted her chin, forcing her eyes back onto Yara's, forcing her tone into factuality, though it insisted to tremble. "It disgusted me. I could barely look on it. Bones and dust, like an animal graveyard. I thought I came to Westeros bringing liberation, that the Targaryen words, 'fire and blood', they would be my tools. Those words, they have always been inspiring words. But they are not tools. They have never been anything less than weapons."

Dany rose from the table abruptly, bringing her wine cup with her, clutching it at her front as she paced halfway around Yara's seat. Her eyes were dry, but a heat clawed at the back of her throat. She swallowed once, twice, before she spoke again. "I burned a city alive, and Bran Stark's council set me free."

Yara stood from her own seat smoothly, navigating around it to stand by Daenerys as she continued to pace, silver head bowed. Yara lowered her own head to search Dany's face, but Dany steadfastly avoided her eye.

"Your Grace," Yara said. "Daenerys. What's done is done. Do you hear me? I will not disagree with you, but there is no changing it now." Yara gave a laugh mid-sentence, an irreverent, sympathetic sound of dismissal. She was not one to indulge Dany in her wallowing. Dany would be thankful for that quality soon, she knew, but she was not yet finished.

"And that is what concerns me," Dany murmured. "What's done is done, and cannot be undone, and so King's Landing must live with its grief, and I must live with my – corruption."

"Corruption," Yara scoffed quietly. Dany watched her pause from the corner of her eye, watched her scan the other woman appraisingly, and then watched her cross in front of Dany. Yara took Daenerys by both of her upper arms, forced her with presence alone to lift her face and meet and, finally, hold her gaze.

"Did you not listen to a word I said in that bloody throne room?" Yara asked quietly, her mouth hinting at a smile. "Listen to me now. Do you fail to see justice?" Yara released one of Dany's arms and brought her hand to Dany's chest, low between her breasts, pressing her closed fingers lightly over the raised, ragged scar tissue beneath the fabric of her dress. Dany pressed her lips together and lifted her chin a little higher.

"Call that justice, if you like," Yara told her lowly. "I call it betrayal, but what difference does it make? _ What's done is done_. And more has been done since. Do you remember Elyne? The salt wife, the kitchen wench? I do. Just as I remember how you treat the rest of the common folk, and Wex Pyke. Just as I remember the stories of your time in Essos, the Unsullied, the slaves. Do you mean to tell me one day of grief and anger should speak louder than all of that? I'll not fucking hear it."

Yara lowered her head, bringing her face a little closer to Dany's, drawing her brows a little further together. "Do not tell me you are going to forget who you are," she said. She paused, and added, "There is more work to do on the Islands."

Dany relented, and curved the corner of her mouth upwards. Yara smiled – a little wearily, perhaps, but smiled – and dropped her hands from Daenerys. Dany shifted her wine cup to one hand to stop Yara with a light grip of her shoulder before she moved to leave. 

She hesitated, but only briefly. "Stay," she said. "This is your cabin."

Yara was not a coy woman. In moments, the candles were extinguished and the two women undressed, swaddled in the furs of the gently swaying bed. Yara curled her lean arms firmly around Dany from behind, tangling their bare, softly furred legs together comfortably and barricading Dany into a pocket of warmth and safety between herself and the wooden slats of the cabin wall.

"Sleep, Your Grace," Yara murmured, the subtle slur of unconsciousness snaking into her own voice. Dany pressed her lips together in the darkness, her eyes fixed on the wall.

"Yara," she replied softly. She received a hum of acknowledgement and enquiry, and exhaled slowly through her nose before she answered.

"You ought not to call me 'Your Grace' any longer."


	13. YARA VII

Dusk had fallen when Yara reached her solar. Her legs leaden and her head light, she retreated to the comfortable warmth of the great hearth, her rare luxury on the Iron Islands, and sank stiffly into the heavy chair beside it. She allowed her head to fall back against the worn wood of its frame and exhaled slowly through pursed lips, emptying her lungs, and then filling them again with the cool, dank, musty, adored air of the Sea Tower.

The voyage back to Pyke had been choppy and uncomfortable, but not treacherous – all had made it home in one piece, and they had only been a day longer on the ship than they might have been in fairer weather. All the same, Yara had felt warm relief in her chest the moment her ship-weary boots had hit solid rock. She was grateful to be returned to the Iron Islands, amongst ocean spray and dilapidated townships, far from King's Landing. Pyke was bleak, but it was not a ravaged skeleton. It was not littered with ash and rubble, chipped bones and abandoned belongings. It was not populated by the grieving or the smug.

Instead, Lordsport ran as heartily as ever – children scrapping by the shallows, men hauling their goods and weapons across the cobbles, and whores and tavern wenches swearing and laughing after them. Yara had inhaled the cool breeze, sharp with salt, and allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch upwards.

Yara tapped her fingertips against the arm of her chair, then stilled them, and allowed them to gently graze the thick wood instead. It always had taken some time to reaccustom herself to solidity after a voyage. On the open sea, material things were ephemeral – little toys of wood and flesh, flung about by invisible forces. Their safe passage, or their savage destruction, were decided by the Drowned God alone. Though she had always completed her journey unharmed, it had always taken a little time, on return, to swallow the decision.

Yara traced the grooves of the wood with her fingertip and swallowed the decision. She was on Pyke, and so was Daenerys.

When Daenerys had emerged to depart from the ship, as always, she had taken Yara's offered hand as assistance. She had not immediately released it when she too stood on solid ground. Instead, she grasped it firmly, and had only allowed Yara's hand to fall away as the two women began to cross the Lordsport cobbles towards their castle-bound horses.

From the corner of her eye, Yara had watched Daenerys smile and wave and call greetings, kind or crass depending, to those commoners she knew. She had watched those smiles returned easily, heard more than a few bawdy remarks tossed towards Daenerys (though in good humour, judging by the weak, playful nature of the smacks those men received from their female companions). Yara had watched a little girl run to Daenerys, tug at her sleeve, and declare, "Your hair is too long, Dan."

Daenerys had touched the girl's head, laughed, and told her to wash her own hair.

Yara had been surprised, she thought, half-watching these scenes of camaraderie as she directed her men and bridled the waiting horses. Now, in the quiet of her solar, she realised it was not at all surprise she had felt. After all, she had witnessed Daenerys's way with smallfolk before. She had known Daenerys spent a great deal of her time amongst the Lordsport crowds while hiding on Pyke. She had watched Daenerys spoil Wex Pyke. 

But the Red Keep had been an ordeal – lengthy recounts of the Targaryen queen's conquest, constant questioning of her character, suspicion heaped on Daenerys and Yara both. The behaviour Yara observed now from Daenerys, upon return, did not exist alone, but in direct contrast to all she'd heard for weeks. Finally afforded peace and solitude, Yara allowed herself a moment for scrutiny.

Yara had known that side of Daenerys existed; her conviction had hinged on it, her impassioned speeches in Daenerys's defence. It was the side of Daenerys that cared more for community than authority, cared more for connection than for battle – the side that had won Daenerys her people's love in the first place. Daenerys loved and was loved by the ironborn easily, and Yara had felt the hot, nameless emotion – _ not surprise _– rise in her chest as she watched.

Vindication, she decided finally.

In Daenerys's relaxed, fluid stride, her affectionate and teasing greetings, her gentle smiles, there was confirmation that Yara's judgement had held true. Aye, Bran Stark's council had eventually come to agree to Daenerys's pardon, but prior to that they had been barbed and hostile. Yara remembered their emotive condemnations of their former queen, their sly contradictions, their countless little treasons. They could shove them up their arses, she decided.

Daenerys loved and was loved, and Yara was _ vindicated_.

On return to the castle and the draughty bedchambers within, Yara had given her travelling party a cursory rest of no more than a few hours before beginning to work through the necessary summons. She rewarded some exemplary guardsmen with coin and weapons of prestigious craftsmanship; others were called before her in pairs or groups for their over-violent conflicts to be mediated. By the time she had retreated to her solar, she had been more exhausted than she'd have liked to admit.

After her brief rest, the exhaustion had melted from her. Perhaps it had been short, but Yara had never been long plagued by fatigue. Her mind was restless – it could not be kept at a stroll, but ever itched to run, scramble over itself in ten directions at once. Yara sprang from her seat and stretched her legs. She had spent enough time indulging in languid reflection; it was time, now, to return to work.

Darrik Pyke was sent for, as was Daenerys, and by the time both had arrived, Yara was pacing restlessly around the solar, hands clasped tightly at the small of her back, words threatening to tumble from her mouth before she had begun to explain herself.

Perhaps Darrik recognised her mood, but Daenerys was quicker. "You could not wait to return to your cause," she said, matter-of-fact, but smirking. Yara unclasped her hands and halted her pacing.

"Aye," she responded finally. She mirrored Daenerys's smile. She knew Yara by now, too – of course, how could she not?

"Aye," Yara repeated, and moved to the heavy table. She braced her palms against its edge, staring at the backs of her scarred hands for a moment before she continued. "Not a word was said about the Iron Islands in King's Landing. Preoccupied, of course, but our independence was not _ mentioned_. A discussion should have been had."

Darrik was silent, impassive, but Daenerys folded her arms loosely across her chest and inclined her head. Yara lifted her head, looked at Daenerys for a moment, before she pushed herself away from the table and began to resume her pacing.

"Either those on the mainland are not interested enough," Yara said, her jaw tight, "or we are not _ doing _enough to interest them. Whichever it is, it can be remedied – and it will be."

"Do you mean to declare war?" Darrik asked drily. Yara scoffed – he was not asking in seriousness, she knew, not after the lengths his queen had gone to to ensure diplomacy over the past weeks, but she supposed he must fail to see another solution. It would have been Balon's choice, and near every king before him. It would not be hers.

"No," she said. "I promised to meet their demands, and I will. But, slow – slow is peaceful, aye, and it is easy. But it is not interesting, nor is it persuasive. We must persuade them."

Yara paused in her pacing and inhaled deeply through her nose. The idea that struck her was not necessarily a new one, and nor did it surprise her, but it was uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable because its fulfilment was entirely inevitable, and she had known this from the start; if she was to secure her kingdom's independence, that goal of hers which had been all-encompassing for years of her life, this decision was a prerequisite.

"I will outlaw raiding," she said, softly, and then louder, firmly, "I will outlaw raiding. Formally. Declare it in Lordsport, write to every Lord. No more."

Daenerys lifted her chin, then, and a smile began to play at the corner of her mouth. She said nothing, but when she met Yara's eye once more, her look was one of encouragement. Yara remembered Meereen, their first meeting – _ 'no more'. _It was for her, she decided then. If only to make the concession a little easier, it was for her.

"They won't like that," Darrik said, apprehensive. "Your people. They've consented to your reforms so far, aye, but this is–"  
  
"What, Darrik?" Yara scoffed. "Abrupt? Aye, it has to be. This is how we get the bloody mainland's attention." She moved back to the table, placing her hands back on the weathered surface, but lightly now, her spine straight. "This was always going to happen." Yara glanced at Daenerys, curving her mouth upwards. "I swore it a long time ago."

Darrik remained unconvinced. Yara moved her gaze back to him and sighed impatiently as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, tightening his jaw. "It's drastic," he said.

"Darrik." Daenerys stepped forward, closer to the table, her hands clasped loosely and calmly at her front. She raised her chin. "You trust your queen's judgement, do you not?"

"Aye–"

"Then trust her now. You ironborn are adaptable. Just as your people adapt to war, to famine – you will adapt to a less violent life."

Yara watched the look exchanged between Darrik and Daenerys. The softening of the hard lines etched into her crewman's face told her that he was relenting, but Yara was not convinced it was due to logical debate alone. Perhaps he still wanted to take the dragon queen into his bed. Perhaps not, and Yara had suitably warned him off that pursuit – and whatever affection seemed to pass between him and Daenerys was friendship alone. 

Darrik exhaled swiftly through his nose. He looked between Daenerys and Yara, and finally nodded at each in turn.

"Your Grace," he said to Yara, and turned to make his departure from the solar.

As the door shut behind him, Daenerys turned her eyes back on Yara. "He is a man of few words," She remarked. Yara contented herself with Daenerys's conversational, amused tone that her attraction to Darrik Pyke was unlikely – that she found the severe ironman mildly entertaining, perhaps likeable, and that was all. Yara turned the corner of her mouth upwards once more.

"He used them up in his youth," Yara replied. "Provoking men much bigger than him."

She crossed around the table to stand closer to Daenerys, leaving barely a foot of space between them. Daenerys tilted her face slightly upwards to hold her gaze. Yara lowered her voice. "This will not affect your plans," she said, "if my men are devoted to keeping the peace for a time?"

Daenerys paused briefly, pressing her lips together, before she answered simply. "I have no plans."

Yara creased her brow. She had been aware, of course, that Daenerys had been made uncertain by the events of King's Landing – that some conviction had been stripped from her, that some amount of guilt and insecurity had set in. But she had also thought that she had done some amount to amend that, even if Daenerys had insisted on the yielding of her royal title.

"You do not mean still to give up? That is _ your _crown!" Yara's tone was harsher than she had intended, but Daenerys did not flinch. Instead, Daenerys's own smile grew a little.

"My former intention," Daenerys began, lowering her head to look down on the table as she brought a hand to rest on the scarred wood, "to regroup my own forces and to win back the Seven Kingdoms…" She lifted her head once more and met Yara's eyes. "It is no longer realistic," Daenerys said calmly. "I might have your fleet, as you have offered, but there are better uses for it, and I have no more support in Westeros than what you provide. Loyalty to the Starks is strong, and the vast strength of my forces remains across the Narrow Sea – and I have no means of winning more. Nor do I have the desire to." 

Yara kept her eyes on Daenerys, her brow furrowing of its own accord. 

"It is clear to me," Daenerys said, "now more than ever, that there is only one queen in this room, and it is not me." Daenerys had softened her voice, but her tone was not sad, nor regretful, nor self-pitying. If anything, Yara thought, she sounded much more peaceful than she had in several months.

"Then who do you intend to be," Yara asked lowly, "if not a queen?"

Daenerys gave a brief, quiet laugh and turned away from Yara. She placed both hands on the table at her sides and leaned back against it, gazing over the cold solar as if it was beautiful. Yara turned her gaze down upon the table. 

"I do not know," Daenerys admitted, "and I do not know if it is here that I will decide. Perhaps I will find who I am to be elsewhere – back in Essos, perhaps in the Free Cities, or further abroad." She paused, and in her periphery Yara saw Daenerys turn her head to look at her. "Eventually. I do not intend to leave quite so soon."

Yara stiffened imperceptibly. There was something like aggravation high in her chest – that Daenerys thought to leave so soon after their return from the capital, that, even if she did not intend to go quite so immediately, she had come to, or perhaps maintained, this conclusion after all that Yara had done.

Yara swept by the emotion before giving herself time to unfurl it.

"Wherever you go, Daenerys," Yara said, slowly, her voice low. She paused and exhaled before she finished, laying a hand on the table as she lifted her eyes from it to meet Daenerys's gaze. She strengthened her tone. "A part of Pyke is yours."

Daenerys held Yara's eyes, a little uncertainty seeming to creep into her own, before she spoke suddenly. "For as long as I can be of any help, I will devote myself to your cause. I see no better, nor more righteous, use for my time and effort than your kingdom's independence and prosperity."

Daenerys reached across the table to lay her hand over Yara's, briefly squeezing the ironborn queen's fingers with her own, and then pushed herself from the table and left the solar.


	14. DAENERYS VII

Dany had held Yara's hand a little too long as she had stepped from the ship's gangway onto the solid ground of Pyke. She had known it at the time – though it was offered as assistance as Dany made the large step from plank to cobbles, she had not released Yara the moment her soles felt stability, as she always had. Instead, she had gripped the ironborn queen's hand a moment longer, sustaining that tight, warm, familiar contact until the screaming gulls, rushing waves and clamour of Lordsport had washed over her and submerged her fully in Pyke. Only then had she let go.

A day later, sitting in quiet, contented contemplation in her Pyke bedchamber, Dany decided that she did not mind. In truth, she had been distracted. She had not thought on her hand in Yara's, nor on her boots on the cobbles. Her thoughts had been occupied with unfamiliar but delicious feeling. Under the heavy grey sky of the Iron Islands, the sharp shore breeze, the squalling sea birds, creaking longships, raucous ironborn chatter, Dany's shoulders had loosened, her brow relaxed, her lips twitched and curved into a smile. _ Homecoming. _ Her maiden voyage to Westeros had filled her chest with a hot, heavy anticipation, an incendiary mixture of triumph and fear. She had named _ that _homecoming, then, but she had been wrong – and returning to Pyke had brought her neither triumph nor fear, but a simple, roughspun cloak of gratification.

Why, then, she had gone on to speak of Essos to Yara, Dany did not know.

Dany leaned back against the old, solid wood of her bedframe and eyed the empty bowl of eel stew. It was an early meal – the sun often hung high in the sky before any of the ironborn around Dany remembered to eat – but Yara had announced her plans to journey back down to Lordsport and break the news of her raiding ban. They would take what little comforts they could get before setting off to face the inevitable backlash.

Dany would go with Yara, of course, as she had each important trip Yara had made to the harbour town. She had made that clear from the beginning, and clearer still in their talk the previous day – _ I will devote myself to your cause. _

She had no more intention of seizing Westeros, of reigning from King's Landing. Her armies remained abroad – within reach, perhaps, but far from her – but, more than that, her ambition was dissipated. She had intended to pursue her birthright, to write another page of the Targaryen monarchs' history, to take the Iron Throne her dragon forebears had forged. But the world was changed, and Dany's eyes were opened to it. Though Drogon lived, in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, the age of dragons was through. There was no longer an Iron Throne for her to take.

Dany no longer grieved for the loss of her intention. Her grief had been long and cold, but it was over, and in its departure Dany felt her burden lift, and thought that, finally, she knew what it must be to be a cheerful, carefree lowborn girl. Poor, perhaps, and reliant on the charity of others – but free to walk whatever path she liked. Free to forge a future, not in dragonfire, but in a warming hearth.

But however relieved Dany was of her queenly burden, she had known from the moment of its lifting that she had chosen her path long ago, and a hearth was an afterthought. Whether she bore their rewards with a crown or without, Dany's wants remained: justice, liberation, and the pursuit of peace. The breaking of wheels. The future she had chosen was Yara's.

Perhaps she did intend, one day, to sail back across the Narrow Sea, and search for her future in the Dothraki grasslands, or in the Free Cities, or in the former slavers' Bay of Dragons. Perhaps she would have to keep searching for the tools needed to enact her vision upon the world, if her Dothraki and Unsullied and dragons had not been enough. But Yara's words echoed in her ears, and halted her thoughts in their tracks: _ "Wherever you go, Daenerys, a part of Pyke is yours."_

For all that the Iron Islands were denigrated on the mainland and further afield, for all that their people were dismissed as impoverished, reaving savages, Pyke's breeze seemed to make its way through Daenerys, to soothe any part of her that burned. Her ears had quick become accustomed to the omnipresent gull shrieking, the crashing of waves on rocks, the whispering of sea foam. The castle of Pyke was cool, damp and draughty, but Dany held a map in her mind of its pockets of warmth and laughter. If a part of Pyke was hers, she was quickly realising, she did not see how she could refuse it.

There was a quick rap of knuckles against her chamber door. Dany swung her legs over the side of the bed to rest her feet upon the floor and watched as the door cracked open, and Wex Pyke slipped inside. The mute boy jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, towards the halls of Pyke beyond the door, and Dany nodded. The party bound for Lordsport meant to leave soon. She found her boots and yanked them ungracefully onto her feet, and followed her little cupbearer out of her bedchamber.

After tailing the boy through Pyke's dank stone halls and over its rickety rope bridges, Dany found Yara waiting for her before the gatehouse in Pyke's outer grounds. The ironborn queen was slipping her hands languidly into worn, cracked gloves of brown leather as she commanded her men about her, projecting authority and brazen confidence. Daenerys thought she could see beneath the veneer. Yara's doubts were manifest in the hard line between her brows, the tension of her jaw. Dusk was a good time to voice great, risky intentions, Dany thought – they could not be retracted come morning, when the uncertain nausea crept in.

Yara turned her head and let her eyes fall on Dany. She smiled. "Daenerys. A mount of your own, for once?"

"Common girls share," Dany called in return, and allowed a smile to split her own face. Whatever worries she thought she could read beneath Yara's bravado seemed not to matter. Yara's self-certainty, whether feigned or true, was catching, and Dany found herself anticipating the coming announcement as she might a feast.

Dany reached Yara, and as quickly as Yara had mounted the horse, she took hold of Dany's upper arm and hoisted her up into the saddle behind her.

The day was overcast, as near all days on the Iron Islands were, but the motion of Lordsport did not cease. Its din could be heard half a mile along the road, and Dany straightened in the saddle as their party drew near. She tightened her grip on Yara's waist at her front. _ The noise will soon stop, _ Dany thought. _ Yara will speak, and they will listen. _She felt half a girl, dreaming of a storybook legend, of meeting him and witnessing his heroic deeds for herself. Or perhaps she felt more like a lady wife, bound by love and duty to praise her lord husband for the simplest of accomplishments. Whichever type of feminine embarrassment she felt, she looked forward to Yara's speech – if the queen's confidence wavered, her companion's would not.

As they cantered into the harbour town, Dany watched the smallfolk turn to watch, and smiled at those she knew – among them, fair Sam, whose friends scoffed at his knightly ambitions; Ironbeard, whom Dany had heard called no other name; Ulf, and his daughters; Jo, the innkeep, and Dany's favoured source of Pyke gossip. She received few smiles in return, but she did not begrudge her acquaintances for it. The sunlight filtering through the blanketing cloud was cold, harsh, and unflattering, and the townspeople were wary. Their queen had not warned of her visit, and they suspected bad news.

Yara leapt from the mount and offered her hand to Dany without hesitation. Dany took it as she dismounted, but was conscious to release it quickly. Yara would have no time for sentimentality's interruption. Darrik Pyke, a few steps behind them, produced a horn from his mare's saddlebags. He blew into it shortly, once, twice, thrice, as Yara moved into the centre of the Lordsport square – an expanse of empty cobblestones, most often full of crewmen coming and going bearing cargo, now emptied save for Yara standing tall in its middle, and her ironborn subjects gradually halting in their work to form a crowded, jostling circle around her.

Daenerys stood by their horse to watch.

The sea breeze was mild today, and Yara's voice rang clear and strong across the port. "You look at me as though I've come to announce a death," she remarked humouredly to the sullen ironborn around her. She lifted her chin. "I have, of sorts."

Yara locked her hands behind her back and began to pace in a slow, wide circle close to her people, looking each of those nearest her in the eyes as she passed. None interrupted as she spoke.

“King Bran Stark,” she shouted, “is no closer to giving us our independence. Do _ not _suggest battle – I have sworn against it, and I will not fall to the same failure as my father. I promised to play by their rules, and I will, but whatever I am doing is not enough. You have shown your loyalty to me in accepting the change, in adapting to reform of these islands, but you will have to change quicker if we are to win this slow war.”

Dany turned the corner of her mouth up. Yara’s voice grew in strength and volume as she spoke, and the ironborn remained quiet – _ a rarity _– listening cautiously.

“That is why,” Yara continued, “effective _ today_, there will be no more raiding. No more! Whatever the greenlanders whisper amongst themselves, we are no race of brutes and savages, and we have no need of their stolen coin and women. From this day, any man who sets out to raid, to reave, to rape, will be drowned for treason.”

Yara’s own voice was almost drowned in the immediate clamour that arose, shouts of protest and the banging of tools and weapons against the cobbles. Dany bit her lip.

“Craven!” a thickset, greying ironman roared. Darrik Pyke had advanced on him in a flash, squaring up against the old warrior with his hand laid against his sword, but Yara held up her hand to halt him. The ironman leaned over Darrik's shoulder to shout again. "We're ironborn," he bellowed at Yara, her standing calm and unmoving as she faced him. "Not no fucking beggars! Craven!"

“Not a craven,” Yara responded sharply. “A woman with half a head about her. Do you remember Balon’s wars? Do you remember losing your fathers, your brothers, your sons? I may lose you your bloody conquests, but I will not lose you your family!”

A woman, half-hidden amidst the crowd, was nodding her head subtly. Daenerys recognised her – a thrall taken from the outskirts of Braavos. When Dany had spoken to her weeks past, she had known very little of the common tongue, and the two had carried a stilted conversation between the language of Westeros and the girl’s few words of High Valyrian. Still, despite the hindrance to her knowing her, Dany could see the thrall’s feeling in her eyes and twitching mouth. She was quiet, but she lent her support to Yara. In fact, as Dany scanned the Lordsport crowd, she saw many faces echoing the thrall. Half a hundred quiet, wary ironborn and foreigners, wordless to avoid the wrath of those of their peers more beholden to the Old Way, but following their queen all the same.

Yara took too much responsibility, Dany realised. _ She takes it upon herself to deliver these speeches, her incentives and her justice, as if she is the only voice that might reach them. _ Yara carried the weight of each and every one of her people upon her broad, lean shoulders, and did not think to remember that they were just as capable of speaking to each other. _ She might put some of them down, _ Dany thought, _ and let her supporters convince the rest. _

But that would take time.

"What is dead may never die!" the brute shouted. "They went in glory, and they feast in the Drowned God's watery halls. You would deny us that, wench?" He made to step past Darrik, and narrowed his eyes when Yara's crewman moved back into his way. WIth an abrupt grunt of aggravation, the ironman moved a large hand to unsheathe his blade, but Darrik Pyke was quicker to his dirk. He sliced the man’s hand off in a second, and did not flinch as the bloody spray flecked his face in red. 

Dany stepped back, and half of the crowd erupted. Dissenters turned on those supporters closest to them and drew their weapons; Lordsport filled with uproar and the flashing sounds of steel.

“Enough!” Yara shouted. "Enough! Lay down your weapons!" They did not. Yara’s party of Pyke guards flung themselves amongst the crowd, drawing their blades and attempting to break up the chaos. Those warrior supporters of Yara’s in Lordsport joined them, but the dissenters did not seem deterred. Dany watched as a black-haired, unscarred youth grabbed a neighbour’s wife and held her as if to cut her throat, roaring abuse at her husband.

“Enough!” Dany repeated at a near screech, and her high call cut well across the deep, gruff shouts of the ironborn. 

In the pause, Yara drew a dirk from her hip, crossed to the border of the crowd, and pointed the blade at the youth. “Would you be the first drowned, boy?” she hissed. “I would be glad of it.” 

She raised her voice and addressed the crowd, anger searing her tone. “Put down your weapons, unhand your fellows! I will not be fought on this!” Yara glanced at Dany as her men broke up the brawling for good, settling the crowd into, if not peace, aggravated shifting and muttering. The ironborn were quick to rile, Dany thought, but quick to halt. _ They shall take it up at a later time, no doubt. But not before Yara has finished, and swayed them. _

Yara turned her eyes back on her people, and sheathed her dirk. “There will be no more raiding! Do you understand me? If you need coin, sell your labour! If you need women, find a wife! We will make no progress with the Starks if we continue to rape their lands and brutalise their people!”

“The Iron Islands are barren!” an anonymous male voice called from the crowd. “We raid for glory, aye, but for food just as well!”

“Our lands are unforgiving,” Yara said, a little lower, so that the crowd quieted to hear her, “but they are not barren. Too many able men squander our soil, and bloody the mainland instead! Do you hear me? _ No more!_”

Dany watched Yara’s chest rise and fall beneath her armour as she took a deep breath. Yara clasped her hands behind herself, straightened her spine, and slowly resumed her pacing. The violence was done, Dany thought, and Yara could not show a break in her confidence.

“I do not ask you,” Yara said, “to sacrifice your identities! Aye, we are fierce! Aye, we are warriors! Aye, we take what is ours!" She paused. "_The mainland is not ours! _ But our claim to our freedom, our right to be an independent kingdom of our own, that is ours! And I will not suffer your _ whinging _if you have to give up a few toys to win it!”

Mutters broke out at the chiding, as if Yara was more an exasperated mother than a passionate queen, but there was no further outbreak of violence. The greying ironman Darrik had fought was still present, Dany saw, cradling his bloody stump. His countenance was pale and wan, but his jaw was set just as firmly. Dany was briefly awed by it, before she turned her eyes back on the queen. _ If that man can lose his hand and hardly wince, _ Dany thought, _ the rest of them might agree to lose the Stony Shore. _

Yara inhaled as she regarded her crowd, and then nodded with finality, apparently satisfied that her work was done.

“As of today,” she called, slowly turning to move back to the horses, “no more.”

*

"It was not enough." 

Yara flung herself into the great chair by the hearth, planting her feet far apart on the weathered floor and staring into the meagre flames.

She had been subdued on departure from Lordsport, and quieter still as their party neared the castle of Pyke. When they had dismounted, stabled their horses, and made their way inside, Dany had followed Yara apprehensively as the queen made her way in silence to her Sea Tower solar. Now, Dany stood uncomfortably by the dying fire, watching Yara gaze intently into it, as if the flames held the answer to some question in her mind. _ Fire holds no answers anymore, _ Dany thought absently. _ You ought to have learned that from me. _

Yara turned her head and met Dany's eyes. She lowered her voice. "They were not convinced," Yara said. "Not in truth." She turned her gaze back on the fire and leaned forward, letting her forearms rest on her thighs, her hands dangling limply between her knees.

"One wretched little fucking speech won't persuade the ironborn to give up their way of life," Yara told the flames. "_Our _way of life. I will not hold their loyalty if I cannot hold my own to them."

Dany stepped towards her. "You are their queen," she said, addressing the side of Yara's face visible to her. She slid hesitantly into the role of advisor like an ill-fitting gown. She had been a queen – she had received counsel, not given it. But Yara sat in a chair that was hers, in a solar that was hers, in a castle that was hers, in a kingdom that was hers, and Dany had made up her mind. She lifted her chin. "Their loyalty may waver, but it will not break."

Yara exhaled heavily and leaned back in her seat. "They chose me for their queen," she said, her tone wry and rueful. "They took my gifts at the kingsmoot, and called my name. It was of their will, not only of my blood." 

She rose from her fireside chair and met Dany's eye as she laid a hand against the stone mantle. "I am no longer certain of that will. My ironborn are loyal, but all are loyal to a point. I have made them promises, just as much as I have made promises to you, or to Bran the Broken. If I break too many, it will not matter that I am queen – I will lose them."

Dany watched Yara brace her palm against the hearth's mantle and lean her weight against it as her gaze fell back upon the fire. She thought she might be stunned, that Yara could truly express anxiety beyond a second's hesitation or a faint crease of her brow, but she was not. Yara was stubborn, and too proud to admit to apprehension, but Dany had sensed its presence before now. And now, with Yara finally voicing her uncertainties, it felt less a shock to Daenerys than the logical conclusion of months of waiting. 

Dany inhaled before she spoke. "A crown feels like a gift," she began slowly, "but, eventually, its wearer must realise that it is not the ornament of a god. Kings and queens who think themselves gods do not live long to enjoy it. Perhaps you are right, and the ironborn will no longer entirely allow you to do as you will." 

She stepped forward and placed a light hand on Yara's wrist upon the mantle, ducking her head until Yara met her eye. "But people are unpredictable," Dany said, quietly, "and they may yet bow happily to your choices. You can do only what you must."

Yara was silent for a time, then, grudgingly, responded, "Aye."

"Theon's loyalties were divided," Dany continued. "You were his queen, his sister, and he risked much, and yet he chose to serve Sansa Stark in Winterfell. Yet, your relationship has not suffered, has it?" She creased her brow encouragingly and curled her fingers a little closer around Yara's wrist.

Yara watched Dany for a moment, and then curved her mouth upwards into the beginning of a smile, suitably cheered for the evening. _ It never takes much, _Dany thought admiringly. Yara's moods were quick tides. She waded through them easily. 

"I could not grudge my little brother the pull of a woman," Yara said.

"The pull of a woman," Dany echoed, as Yara shifted on her feet and turned away from the hearth, moving her free hand to rest on Dany's arm. Dany lifted her brows at Yara and continued, teasingly. "And that is something you know well?"

Yara broke into a grin, and then her lips were on Dany's, the queen's body pressed flush against hers. Dany smiled, too, bringing her hands to rest against Yara's waist and kissing her for long moments before the iron armour beneath her fingers grew irritating.

Dany broke from Yara's lips, her eyes cast down and heavy lidded. "Take off your clothes," she murmured.

"I am queen here," Yara replied lowly, her smile still playing at the corner of her mouth. She lifted her chin, close enough to Dany to brush her lips with it. "Take yours off first."

The simple woollen dress Daenerys wore was loose, and dropped to the floor quickly with a tug at its laces. The intricacies of Yara's armour took longer to unravel, but the metal clattered to the floor quickly afterwards all the same. Yara took Dany's bare arms in her hands to pull her backwards into the great hearthside chair on top of herself, lowering her hand almost immediately. Dany's breath hitched, and Yara laughed softly as she moved her mouth to the soft, unblemished skin of Dany's neck.

_ This is an old chair, _ Dany thought vaguely, as Yara's fingers slid between her thighs. _ Lords and kings have sat here. _Yara gave Dany's throat a long, slow lick before finding her lips again, and Dany quickly decided this was a better use for the chair.

"You should wear this more often, Daenerys," Yara murmured against her mouth.

"Each time you call me that," Dany whispered breathlessly in reply, "You are wasting time." She shifted on Yara's lap and gave herself space to lower her own hand and touch Yara. "_Dany,_" she breathed in correction.

"Dany," Yara said quietly in response. Neither woman needed more words than that.


	15. YARA VIII

Yara was seated at the worn table in her solar, swirling a cup of wine idly. The wine was dark and bitter, a poor substitute for the rich vintage served to her in King's Landing, but it was drinkable, and Yara had need of it. Days had passed since her outlaw of raiding; time enough for her letters to have reached the other lords of the Iron Islands, and time enough for them to have become enraged. Another storm was predicted to assail Pyke, of gales and thunder and hard, cold sleet. _ That makes two for me to weather, _Yara thought wryly.

The old solar door groaned as it opened. Yara did not have to lift her head to know it was Darrik Pyke who had entered. The lean, dark-haired ironman kicked the door closed behind him and approached her table, his brow furrowed heavily and his shoulders tense, and stood by Yara's chair in silence. He had never been one for polite greetings, Yara thought – more often, the man would hover wordlessly nearby until acknowledged, growing more sullen and offended by the second but stubbornly refusing to give the first word. _ Deference, maybe, _ Yara thought, almost affectionately, _ but more likely indolence. _

Finally, Yara lifted her head and met his steel-grey eyes. "What is it?" she asked.

"I was right," Darrik answered. There was no smugness in his tone; disinterest, a hint of boredom, but more grimness than anything else. He squared his jaw. "Three longships left Great Wyk, Your Grace. Raiders, bound for the North." A pause. "They broke your law," he added, unhelpfully.

Yara exhaled, planted her elbows on the table and dropped her face into one hand. She had anticipated the unrest, that was true, but in the form of angry letters. In the form of weak little riots, like the first in Lordsport, or a surge in tavern brawls, or her men spitting on the floor at her passing. A bold and violent act of rebellion so soon had managed to surprise her.

"How many aboard?" she asked dully.

"A hundred, give or take."

"A hundred cunts." Yara lifted her head from her hand and rose from her seat, taking her cup of wine with her as she moved to a window. The clouds were thick, dark, and oppressive, but the storm had not yet broken. Like as not, the raiders would reach the Stony Shore without difficulty.

She bit her lip. A hundred men was not so many – aye, they would be fierce warriors, each and every one, and they would wreak havoc on the smallfolk towns, but a strong force of Northern swords would put them down with ease. Yara's worry was not of their strength, but of their ambition. If little enough resistance was put up, they may venture further inland and harass the greater keeps. They may send word back to their rebel fellows on the Islands and increase their numbers. They may turn one little raid into a score, and put Yara's reform to bed before it had truly begun.

Yara turned to Darrik, clutching her wine in one white-knuckled hand. "These hundred are only the hundred bold enough to set out so quickly," she said. "Now that they have sailed, more will follow, and soon. The bloody Old Way – my father revived it too well. My words and diplomacy cannot undo his decades of bloodshed."

"Then leave your words and diplomacy," Darrik said simply. He lifted a hand to rest on his swordbelt; clad in his weaponry and armour, emblazoned with the kraken of the house he served, Darrik seldom looked unready for battle. "Pursue the raiders and crush them quickly. Let _ their _blood water the North, and the others won't lose their respect for you."

"Ironborn will not spill the blood of ironborn."

"Fuck that," Darrik replied. "Been spilling each other's blood for years, and we're still clinging to that old song? They're rebels and traitors, Your Grace, and they'll soon be too far inland to drown. I say kill them, afore they kill you."

Yara tensed her jaw. Her crewman was right, she knew; the ironborn might listen to strong words and official papers for a time, but in the end, words were wind. Putting a hundred traitors to the sword was less ephemeral. Her people wanted blood, not peace – well, let them have blood in the name of peace. They were not so witless as to misunderstand that.

And there was that other thing, too. If Yara were to leave her raiders to the swords of the North, would the Starks love her for it? The raiders were her people – her responsibility, and held to her justice. She had promised the greenlanders reform, and she was not like to back up her claims with apathy towards her own men's savagery. She had promised the end of ironborn violence, and she could not allow a slip to go unpunished. A hundred cunts, for a kingdom's independence.

Yara turned back to the window, watching the gulls soar and the waves roll thickly towards the rocks of Pyke. The heaviness was tangible. If she stepped out of the Sea Tower onto the rope bridge, she knew, she'd smell the storm's electric promise above all the brine and seaweed.

"The storm must pass first," Yara said. "I will not sacrifice my crew for a hundred cunts. Gather men – you have days to get them ready for battle."

"Aye." Darrik inclined his head, ragged locks of dark hair falling into his eyes. He lifted his head and brushed them aside impatiently, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the solar door. "Another request for audience, Your Grace."

"Who?"

"Aggar Redhand." Darrik paused. "Not that he still has the hand."

Yara gave a weak smirk and nodded. "Show him in, then." The Redhand was named for his brutality and fearlessness, for a right hand seldom clean of his foes' blood. The hand may still be red, Yara thought, but it was no longer Aggar's – Darrik had sliced it clean off his wrist during the Lordsport scuffle. _ A great statement, but the Redhand will be in want of a new name. _

Darrik left the solar and returned quickly, moving to seat himself in a corner whilst the Redhand appeared in the doorway. The ironman was nearing fifty years of age, and his once-black hair was quickly fading to grey, but his figure was no less imposing – tall, thickly bearded, broad of shoulder, thick of every limb. He was clad in armour, and the stump of his right hand was wrapped in cloth and leather. The sharp scent of healing herbs was strong. The wound had been cauterised, Yara guessed, and slathered in some remedial ointment, else the man would be laying feverish in bed rather than standing before his queen.

"Come to call me craven again, Redhand?" Yara asked, rounding the table to face him properly and placing a hand on the chair nearest to her.

"No," the Redhand responded gruffly. He paused, shifting his weight between his feet, then dropped to one knee before her. He held her gaze as he spoke, voice low and gravelly. "I'm no fucking lover of mercy. I'll give m'self to the waves before I see the ironborn turned to a bunch of bloody blushing maids. But I lost one hand for sake of the Old Way. I won't be losing the other."

Yara was in equal parts proud and amused. She took a step towards the kneeling warrior. "Is that supposed to be a vow of loyalty?"

"Aye," he answered, grudgingly. "Might be a fucking halfwit when the blood's up, but I'm not fool enough t'join the losing side. Best I can do is swear m'self early, and see Your Grace's cause don't wind up full of green boys and cravens."

Yara considered the grey ironman for a moment. It crossed her mind that the Redhand's declaration of loyalty was false – that, perhaps, he intended to swear his sword, yet turn it on her when his true allies rose. After a second thought, Yara decided the old warrior was not clever enough for that. She felt a small surge of pride in her people. _ Who else might lose a hand by his queen's men and thank her for it? _

A bitter greenlander might lose a fight, and forever nurse a venomous grudge against his victor. Yara knew the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister, had never truly recovered from the loss of his own swordhand – he had managed, aye, but never without insecurity and resentment. Her ironborn were different. Aye, they'd rue the loss of their strength; they'd tend their wounds, simmer in fury, work their way in difficulty back to power. But they were not like to turn sour. It was tough to be a loser, but the ironborn knew the best man won – they would not grudge him that. Some other day, they might have been the victor themselves. To be bested was to be impressed, and Darrik had impressed the Redhand for Yara.

In truth, she had need of men like Aggar Redhand. Ironborn like him had fought in Balon's rebellion and survived. They had lost the war, aye, but their experience garnered respect and solidarity; their voices were amongst the loudest on the Iron Islands. To have men like the Redhand on her side was valuable in the eyes of her people – moreso, even, than to have a Targaryen.

"Rise, Redhand," Yara said. She watched the ironman get to his feet, slowly rising near a foot above her. She lifted her chin to address him at his full height. "I accept your vow of loyalty," she said, "half-baked as it was. You're in luck – you'll have the chance to prove it immediately."

She raised a hand and beckoned to Darrik, who rose from his seat and approached from the corner. "The Drowned God loves us, Darrik. You have your first crewman. Redhand, see that you gather what fighters you can – as soon as the sky clears, we sail to the North."

Darrik gave a short nod, inferring Yara's dismissal. The Redhand tightened his jaw and gave the same. "Your Grace," the two men said, in near unison.

As the two ironborn turned to leave the solar, Yara watched Darrik's mouth curve into a smirk. He clapped Aggar Redhand on the shoulder as they moved towards the door. "On your way, Redstump."

*

The storm broke by nightfall. Torrential sleet lashed the walls of Pyke, and the dark corridors were now and then illuminated by a strike of lightning. Yara had hung a thick blanket of fur over her bedchamber window to block out the flashes, that her sleep need not be disturbed any more than it already would be by anger and anxiety.

As much as she would have liked to request three flagons of the sour wine and fall fast into a dreamless sleep, the day's work was not yet over. She had delayed the inevitable for a long while, but the knowledge was never far from her consciousness – with a cloud of sentimentality and longing cloaking her mind, and the ghosts of Dany's touches lingering on her skin, she had no further want of a bedwench.

Nym arrived swiftly upon her summons. The girl was dressed modestly, by her standards. A sleeveless dress of black wool, lightly embroidered around the neckline and hem, covered her from tits to ankle, but her bronze arms were bare and jangled faintly with thin bangles and precious stones. Her dark hair curled softly, deliberately, about her shoulders. Nym curved her mouth into a smile and dipped her head.

"My queen," she said as she lifted it again and stepped towards Yara.

Yara stood from her window seat and locked her hands behind her back. "Nym," she said. "Don't sit. This won't take long."

She pressed her lips together. Nym's role in Yara's staff was obsolete – Yara's days had become occupied with work and counsel, and her nights became ever shorter, time enough for sleep alone. A bedwench was of value to one with stability, a desire to _ maintain_, not to change. One with empty days and emptier nights. Yara's reform, her promises, her laws and journeys and stressors, had seemed to render her bed much smaller. _ Not for Daenerys _– but Nym would not like to hear that.

The bedwench was like to react with hot offence to her dismissal, Yara knew. Despite her low birth, Nym had always tended towards jealousy, and while Yara had enjoyed her fierce attention and brazen seduction in the past, it had fast become a cloying irritant when the girl held less interest for her. In Nym's mind, Yara imagined that she thought of her _ queen _as the bedwench. Yara cleared her throat to correct her.

"You had best find some other castle to serve," Yara told her.

She watched Nym's wide brown eyes register surprise, then hurt, then, predictably, fury. Nym lifted a foot as if to take a step back, but thought the better of it and held her ground, one hand crossing her stomach to grip her bejewelled wrist. Yara exhaled slowly through her nose and waited.

"Is this a dismissal, Your Grace?" Nym asked finally through gritted teeth. Her tone had cooled quickly, Yara noted impassively – the warm, girlish melody became a cold hiss in an instant. _ Perhaps she did not love me so much as all that. _ The thought was almost amusing. _ Perhaps she is just a talented whore. _

"Aye, it is."

Nym was silent for a time. Yara might have thought her tongue-tied, but she knew that was not the case – Nym was preparing her words. The girl's sharp wit had never been turned on her queen before, but Yara had witnessed her squabbles with the other serving wenches of Pyke in the past. The girl was a fierce gossip, and her calculated barbs had reduced many softer women to tears. _ She is lucky I am not so quick to weep. _

"Perhaps they are right," Nym finally declared, "_your people_. The mainland lords have rotted your mind. Trade, and diplomacy, and peace. You have given up battle and bloodshed and victory, and now you would give up a sweet cunt, too."

"Is it so sweet?" Yara muttered, but Nym continued to speak across her.

"Do you intend to _ sow _ now, Your Grace? You are not the queen you were," she spat.

Yara curved her mouth into a smirk. _ Do I intend to sow? No – we do not sow – but I shall happily watch my people learn, and reap the rewards of discipline. _

"You're right," Yara replied softly, dangerously, "I am not the queen I was. And thank the Drowned God for it, or I might still be fucking you instead of ruling. I am not the queen I was – but I am still your queen."

She closed the gap between herself and her bedwench. Yara was several inches taller than Nym; this close, the girl had to tilt her head high to hold her gaze. A stray lock of curled brown hair fell across her face. Nym stubbornly refused to move it aside. Yara lifted a hand and moved it for her, then bent closer to continue. Her tone was low and warning. "I am your queen, and if you would resist any of my decisions, you may leave my Islands entirely."

A beat passed before Nym responded in a harsh whisper. "King's Landing is short of whores these days."

The wench left quickly after that. Yara might have been irritated at having been denied the final word but, after all, she was not the one choosing to seek a life in the stinking corpse of the mainland capital. After Nym had flounced from her bedchamber (to lick her wounds or, more likely, to fuck the first cupbearer she encountered and demand his coin for it) Yara undressed in haste, extinguished her few scattered candles, and sank onto her great oak bed. She had no bitter wine with which to ease her way into sleep, but, still, sleep would come – eventually.

Half a night seemed to pass, though Yara knew dimly it could not have been more than one hour. Still she lay awake, now closing her eyes, now opening them and staring up at the heavy, dusty canopy of her bed, for all the difference it made. Her stomach felt hollow. Not in hunger, but in a dark, wearying pessimism, the building worries of weeks and days – _ a hundred cunts _ – and, beneath it all, a bedrock of gnawing _ aloneness_.

Yara began to contemplate if she had been wrong to dismiss Nym so soon. Though it had taken a long while of skirting the subject, the girl's warmth and presence would have been welcome to her now. Though the furs on her bed were heavy and enveloping, her naked body beneath them seemed uncharacteristically cold and fragile.

Yara rolled onto her side, finding no more comfort than she had on her back. No, she had been right to send the bedwench away. King's Landing held more promise of gold and success for Nym than an apathetic mistress such as Yara. And, after all, it was not Nym she would like to warm her bed.

There had been one night, aboard the ship back to Pyke, that she had joined Daenerys in bed. She had not slept with her, as she had on all too few occasions, but had slept _ by _her – enclosing the Targaryen woman in her arms, breathing the scent of her in her silver hair, warm musk and flower oils and the hint of Pyke's salt air lingering on her person. She would be welcome now. Perhaps Daenerys had begun as a wartime ally, a fierce and righteous queen with a strong command and quick wit and astonishing beauty, but she was no longer a queen. She was something quite different, and now, Yara thought, a fair bit more valuable.

Her ally slept in another room, far from Yara's own chamber, so Yara contented herself with the image of her beside her – slack-jawed, soft-lipped, lying in a pool of silver waves and in trust of Yara. _ She is no longer a queen, _ Yara thought, letting her eyes finally sink closed of their own accord. _ Perhaps she may agree to be a bedwench again, if only for a night. _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! if you liked it, please leave a kudos/comment, and add this work to your bookmarks – it may end up quite lengthy! thank you again and stan sapphic queens ♡


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